This volume reports on innovative, useful evaluation work conducted within U.S. college foreign language programs. Each case is reported by program-internal educators, who walk readers through critical steps, from identifying evaluation uses, users, and questions, to designing methods, interpreting findings, and taking actions.

Despite rapid globalization within contemporary society and the seemingly obvious need for the study of foreign languages (FL) and cultures; recruitment to undergraduate FL degrees has dwindled, graduate programs have disappeared; and institutions have restructured independent language departments into mega-departments of languages, literatures, and cultures. At the same time, the FL and humanities disciplines have engaged in “soul-searching” exercises in an effort to understand and express a renewed sense of value for the study of foreign language and culture. As a result of these kinds of societal and disciplinary movements, FL programs, along with other educational sectors, are facing the increased need to engage with peripheral forces like accountability and accreditation, to express and ensure their value through outcomes assessment, and to begin to think, innovate, and behave programmatically. Key to enacting these changes systematically and effectively is heightened awareness of the importance of program evaluation, not only as a means to demonstrate how and why FL study is a valuable pursuit in today’s world, but also as a process through which sound improvements can be made, participants can learn, and educational relevance can be sought. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

This guide, designed to help language educators meet the needs of program evaluation and assessment often requested by their institutions, provides step-by-step advice to help educators conduct evaluation and assessment and to show how it can lead to meaningful programmatic change and provide useful data on which to base curricular decisions.

The authors describe evaluation as a way of understanding and developing language programs: the thematic and background section sets out the decision-making, quality management, and learning functions of evaluation. Case studies illustrate the diversity of evaluation contexts, functions and approaches, documenting the ways in which evaluation processes and outcomes inform and facilitate program development, and contribute to explaining how language and teacher education programs constitute opportunities for learning. The ways in which evaluation practice can be researched and developed to maximize policy, institutional and program effectiveness is included, and a comprehensive set of resources for those commissioning, undertaking or researching language program evaluations concludes the text.

The specific—and varied—ways in which assessment and evaluation can impact learning and teaching have become an important language education research concern, particularly as educators are increasingly called on to implement these processes for improvement, accountability, or curricular development purposes. Useful Assessment and Evaluation in Language Education showcases contemporary research that explores innovative uses of assessment and evaluation in a variety of educational contexts. Divided into three parts, this volume first examines theoretical considerations and practical implementations of assessment conducted for the purpose of enhancing and developing language learning. Part 2 addresses novel assessment development and implementation projects, such as the formative use of task-based assessments, technology-mediated language performance assessment, validation of educational placement tests for immigrant learners, and the use of assessment to help identify neurolinguistic correlates of proficiency. The final section of the book highlights examples of argument-based approaches to assessment and evaluation validation, extending this critical framework to quality assurance efforts in new domains. Adding to research on traditional and conventional uses of testing and evaluation in language education, this volume captures innovative trends in assessment and evaluation practice that explicitly aim to better inform and enhance language teaching and learning.

This volume is designed as a practical handbook that provides guidelines for teams of evaluators investigating a department or language program or individual teachers or language program directors seeking to better understand the content and context of their programs or courses. Although the volume focuses on postsecondary foreign language programs, readers who teach at the secondary levels will be able to easily adapt the guidelines and procedures to their own contexts. The book is divided into three parts: (1) Framing the Evaluation; (2) Asking the Right Questions; and (3) Reporting for Change.

This volume integrates complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) and L2 writing scholarship through a collection of in-depth studies and commentary across a range of writing constructs, learning contexts, and second and foreign languages. The text is arranged thematically across four topics: (i) perspectives on complexity, accuracy, and fluency, (ii) new constructs, approaches, and domains of L2-writing scholarship, (iii) methodological issues, and finally (iv) curricular perspectives. This work should appeal to graduate students and academics interested in expanded discussions on CDST, highlighting its utility for theorizing and researching language change, and to L2 writing scholars curious about how this fresh approach to researching L2 development can inform understandings of how L2 writing develops. As a CDST approach to language change has matured and taken a place among the dominant epistemologies in the field, students and researchers of L2 development alike will benefit from this volume.