Department of German

CLASS PARTICIPATION: 25%

Who uses? Students: to gain insight into how well they are projecting their interest, preparation and effort; to modify their participation behavior, if necessary. Instructors: to gauge individual as well as overall class performance; to motivate students to actively engage in class; to get feedback on instruction.

What is being assessed?  Aside from class attendance, this assessment feature measures and/or provides in a holistic way information on grasp of vocabulary and grammatical features, ability and flexibility for oral expression, engagement in group and partner work, and consistent preparedness for class.

Who/What is being impacted? This feature impacts the entire class. Also impacted are the instructor who receives feedback on materials and classroom activities as well as individual students who receive feedback from instructor.

Why? Consistent and productive class participation are a central component for a communicative, content-focused classroom environment. The fact that this feature constitutes 25% of the overall semester grade stresses this emphasis. 

Problems and Possible Solutions:

Since the holistic nature of this assessment feature make it difficult to define its criteria, there is a certain amount of ambiguity connected to the rubric “class participation”. Measurements vary from daily recordings, e.g.,+ / - check marks, to occasional grades.  Instructors are encouraged to provide feedback to students with a letter grade after each thematic unit and additionally through informal contact in office hours and via e-mail.

HOMEWORK: 15%

Who uses? Students: to receive feedback on content and linguistic production; to practice and improve accuracy of vocabulary and grammatical forms; to allow for independent and individualized student engagement with topic at hand. Instructor: to receive feedback on comprehension and accuracy and on level of difficulty of assigned task; to motivate students to work consistently throughout the semester.

What is being assessed? Level of preparation and comprehension of materials, ranging from discrete point grammatical structures to content and personal connections to themes discussed in class. Measurement generally through use of +/- checks. Assignment of letter grade after each thematic unit and communication to student is encouraged.

Who/What is being impacted? Quality of class interaction and language use; classroom dynamics. Allows instructor to give individualized feedback and to increase student motivation.

Why?  Daily homework is considered an important assessment tool since it stresses the consistency of engagement with language outside the classroom. Instructors, in turn, need consistent feedback from homework assignments to fine-tune their classroom tasks and homework assignments.

ESSAY WRITING: 20%: (Non-intensive: 6 essays/intensive 5 essays)

Who uses? Students: to explore, develop, and practice writing in German; to gauge ability of producing longer written texts than in daily homework; to gauge individual weaknesses and strengths. Instructor: to gauge student's progress and difficulties as well as his/her effectiveness in presenting content in appropriate language focused ways; allows detailed individualized feedback from instructor. 

What is being assessed? Students’ ability to appropriately use new vocabulary and structures in a content-based writing assignment. Students’ ability to produce increasingly complex language features. Close link between assigned essay topic and content-focus of unit allows for assessment of level of understanding of different facets of content covered. Level focus on “story” requires students to write in various genres, from the personal narrative, to the public/journalistic “story.” Over the course of the sequence, essay assignments therefore also gauge students’ ability to adapt their writing to the stylistic requirements of each genre.

Who/What is being impacted? Students can focus on individualized targeted areas of language use and take steps toward becoming responsible, independent learners. Instructors have to tailor tasks and daily homework assignments to allow for optimum preparation for essay task.

Why? Departmental curriculum places clear focus on development of writing skills. Focus on process writing is attended to through requiring two versions (draft and re-write/final) are required. Essay assignments require extended engagement with language outside of classroom, allow for reflection and self-editing. Detailed feedback provides a good basis for students to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses and to develop and grow as independent learners. 

Problems and Possible Solutions:
 

1. In order to ensure comparability between sections, we recommend a “group evaluation session” for the first essay of the semester. A grading grid for this Level exists but may have to be fine-tuned. 
2. Essay topics and expectations with regard to level of creativity, level of incorporation of content-features of unit, attention to unit-specific formal features of language need to be spelled out in more detail.

QUIZZES: 15%: two quizzes per thematic unit

Who uses? Students: to get immediate, diagnostic feedback on their level comprehension, accuracy. Instructors: to motivate consistent engagement with language; to receive feedback on effectiveness of instruction; to gauge students’ progress in particular areas of grammar and vocabulary.

What is being assessed? A typical quiz consist of a listening comprehension component, contextualized grammatical features, and a short writing piece which is based on the thematic focus of the unit and approaches paragraph level writing. It was suggested to alternate the writing piece with a piece for reading comprehension. 

Who/What is being impacted? Students: have to work consistently in class and in homework to do well in quizzes. Instructor: quizzes identify areas where additional instructional intervention may be necessary. Class dynamics: quizzes take up valuable class time and need to be structured to be as productive as possible for students and instructors alike.

Why? Quizzes provide consistent feedback throughout the course of semester on progress in highly focused areas that have recently been introduced and emphasized in class. They provide necessary and relatively immediate feedback for instructors and thus help to fine-tune instruction to needs of students.

Problems and Possible Solutions:
 

1. The relatively high number of quizzes takes up a considerable amount of class time. Instructors need to monitor closely the amount of time devoted to quizzes so as not to detract from the content and communicative focus of the class. 
2. High number of quizzes complicates coordination of quiz contents between sections. Quizzes should allow instructors to focus on areas that they have stressed in their own section but need to be comparable in terms of content and focus on formal features.

ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEWS: 10% (administered at the beginning, the mid-point and the end of the semester).

Who uses? Students: to receive feedback on oral language use in relatively unplanned, though topically restricted conversations. Instructors: to motivate students to engage in speaking tasks in class; to build up confidence in speaking; to practice and familiarize students with oral interview situations.

What is being assessed? Taken together, the three interviews are intended to assess the progress in speaking ability achieved over the course of the semester. The initial interview is to be informal and not focused on a thematic topic of the unit. Only the mid-semester and end-of-semester interviews receive a grade. Assessment of progress in vocabulary acquisition, syntactic complexity, familiarity with topic of unit, command of discourse features relevant to interview topic, i.e., presentation of opinion, comparison etc.

Who is being impacted? Students: oral interviews are usually the most anxiety prone area of language performance; Instructors: need to provide opportunities for practice of oral performance skills during classtime, even if limited due to time constraints.

Why? Interviews allow for sustained oral performance of students that goes beyond the level of producing two to three coherent sentences which is often prevalent  in class. Students will gain confidence in their speaking ability through topic-focus of interviews. 

Problems and Possible Solutions:
 

1. Large class size may burden instructor with inordinate amount of time to administer 3 interviews per semester/per student. After consultation with coordinator, instructors may want to drop first, informal interview.
2. Effectiveness of first, informal interview can be questioned. The fact that there is not content-focus in that interview but that it focuses on the personal life and recent experiences of interviewee seems to suggest that this first interview could be eliminated. Further discussion on this is needed. Possible changes need to be reflected in syllabus.
3. The departmental rating sheet needs to be reviewed, i.e., the features of the three skill areas and their sequencing need adjustment. 
4. Currently, syllabus states that final interview will be conducted by two interviewers, one of which is not the regular class instructor. This has proven to be too complicated to administer in terms of schedules and rooms. Needs to be changed in syllabus.

ORAL PARTNER PRESENTATION: 10%: one such presentation in Intermediate II/Intensive Intermediate. Currently not in Intermediate I.

Who uses? Students: to receive feedback on speaking ability within the context of a planned performance;  Instructors: to provide focused feedback during preparation of project and after completion; to motivate students to actively participate in oral activities in class.

What is being assessed? Planned performance allows to work on more complex content and formal structures and also greater accuracy than is possible in spontaneous speech. Therefore we assess level of preparation and use of visual aids; creativeness and interest; organization of presentation; accuracy (grammar and vocabulary) and extent of audience engagement. Submission of outline and discussion with instructor/peers one week before presentation constitutes part of the grade.

Who/What is being impacted? Students: need to engage in extensive work with a partner in which they negotiate content, meaning, and language use; students learn how to access information about the German-speaking world; students are encouraged to be creative in formulating their topic (within the topical framework of the course, though). Instructors: allows for individual feedback. Class as a whole: audience is impacted by presentations. Peer feedback and comments on presentation required.

Why?  Emphasizes collaboration among group (max. three students) and requires research on topic of interest to students. Allows for students to express their interest in a specific topic and foster an interest in things German. Selected partner presentations could be video-taped and used for workshops in which assessment of such presentations are discussed..   

FINAL EXAM: 15%: 

Who uses? Students: to gauge their overall progress in the course with regard to content and formal features; to apply linguistic knowledge acquired over the semester in specified tasks in all modalities. Instructor: to gauge overall progress of students; to motivate student to consistent performance until the very end of the semester.

What is being assessed? Students’ cumulative linguistic and content knowledge acquired over the course of the semester in all modalities over the course of the semester. The listening comprehension component should be an authentic video component (possibly from DW). Unlike quizzes, final exam does not focus on discrete-point formal structures.  Exam should be the same for all sections in a particular track and therefore only include components covered by all sections following guidelines and goals spelled out in the curriculum.  The components of the exam and the assessment criteria are to be coordinated by the instructors. 

Who/What is being impacted? Students, instructors, curricular goals.

Why?  Considerable time was devoted to consider the benefits and value of the final exam in light of all the other assessment features, i.e., whether the final exam is really necessary as an additional assessment tool. Opinions ranged from ambivalence to strong support, with those in support in the majority. 

Problems and Possible Solutions:

1. Courses outside language departments usually place strong emphasis on final exam. Students need to be made aware that final exam does not carry as much weight in our syllabus and the reasons for that. 
2. Students must be made to understand the difference between what is assessed on quizzes and the much more cumulative, holistic and content-focused assessment done in the final exam.