A follow-up to the ACTFL Integrated Performance Assessment Manual published in 2003. This book provides readers with expanded guidelines for how to design IPA tasks to informthe backward design of a unit. Suggestions on how to provide effective feedback and howto improve learner performance are shared. Also included is a re-conceptualized rubricfor the interpretive mode and the addition of IPA rubrics for Advanced-level languageperformance.

ACTFL has developed a prototype for assessing the progress language students are making in achieving the K-16 standards as well as in developing their language proficiency. The Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) is a cluster assessment featuring three tasks, each of which reflects one of the three modes of communication---Interpretive, Interpersonal and Presentational---as outlined in the ACTFL Performance Guidelines for K-12 Learners (1998) and the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project, 1999). The three tasks are aligned within a single theme or content area, reflecting the manner in which students naturally acquire and use the language in the real world or the classroom. Each task provides the information and elicits the linguistic interaction that is necessary for students to complete the subsequent task. IPAs are designed for students at the novice-, intermediate-, and pre-advanced levels of proficiency. They are standards-based; performance-based; developmental in nature; integrative; designed to be used with scoring rubrics that rate performance in terms of whether it meets expectations, exceeds expectations, or does not meet expectations for the task; and valid and reliable. Design of the model IPAs, development of the rubrics, and research on test feasibility, reliability, and validity were supported by U.S. Department of Education International Research and Studies Program award #PO17A970028. The project involved hundreds of foreign language educators and language students across the country. The IPA serves as a model in exemplifying not only how research and practice can be more closely aligned, but also how standards-based classroom instruction and assessment practices can meet to form a seamless connection. It holds much promise for the future as our profession continues to advance in standards-based instruction and assessment.

"A follow-up to the ACTFL Integrated Performance Assessment Manual published in 2003. This book provides readers with expanded guidelines for how to design IPA tasks to inform the backward design of a unit. Suggestions on how to provide effective feedback and how to improve learner performance are shared. Also included is a re-conceptualized rubric for the interpretive mode and the addition of IPA rubrics for Advanced-level language performance."--Publisher's website.

This edited book brings together fifteen original empirical studies from a variety of international contexts to provide a detailed exploration of language assessment, testing and evaluation. Language assessment has a key role in the development and implementation of language and educational policies at the national level, and this book examines some of the impacts - both positive and negative - of different skills testing and examination approaches on learning outcomes and individual students' language learning. This book will be of interest to scholars working in applied linguistics and language education, teacher training, testing and evaluation, as well as stakeholders such as practitioners, educators, educational agencies, and test developers.

Pushing the field forward in critically important ways, this book offers clear curricular directions and pedagogical guidelines to transform foreign language classrooms into environments where stimulating intellectual curiosity and tapping critical thinking abilities are as important as developing students’ linguistic repertoires. The case is made for content-based instruction—an approach to making FL classrooms sites where intellectually stimulating explorations are the norm rather than the exception. The book explicitly describes in detail how teachers could and should use content-based instruction, explains how integration of content and language aims can be accomplished within a program, identifies essential strategies to support this curricular and pedagogical approach, discusses issues of assessment within this context, and more. Content-Based Foreign Language Teaching provides theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence for reforming curricula and instruction, describes models and curriculum planning strategies that support implementation of well-balanced FL programs, explores the transformative potential of critical pedagogy in the FL classroom, and offers illustrations of secondary and post-secondary language programs that have experimented with alternative approaches. Advancing alternatives to conventional curriculum design, this volume posits meaning-oriented approaches as necessary to create language programs that make a great difference in the overall educational lives of learners