Falk Teacher Publishes Research on Assessment in Foreign Language Education

During the winter and spring of 2010, Ms. Hellmann and two graduate students from the University of Pittsburgh began a research study at Falk to examine student performance on the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA).  The IPA is an assessment tool used in foreign language education to rate student performance in each of the three modes of communication.  In the assessment, rubrics are used to rate the students’ interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational communication skills.  A common theme provides an authentic premise for the IPA.  As students move through each phase of the assessment, the students gain content knowledge that they can apply in subsequent tasks.  Although research exists on the implementation of the IPA at the university, high school, and middle school levels, there were no examples of IPA implementation in elementary school foreign language programs. Therefore, the research focused on students in grades 4 and 5 and occurred during the students daily Spanish lessons.

The IPA was implemented at the end of a three-month, thematic unit about “El Mar Caribe” (the Caribbean Sea).  In this unit, students learned about the weather, geography, ocean life, clothing, and beach activities that are common in the Caribbean.  To complete the interpretive phase of the IPA, the students first watched a video in Spanish about a young boy traveling to the beach.  While watching the video, the students also completed an “interpretive guide” by answering questions about what they saw and heard in the video.  Once this phase of the IPA was complete and the students were given feedback on their performance, the students moved on to the interpersonal phase of the IPA.  For this task, the students had to ask and answer questions with a partner in order to find the differences between two images of a beach scene.  The students were rated on their ability to communicate and maintain the conversation with their partners.  After the students finished the interpersonal task and feedback was given, the students then completed the presentational task of the IPA by writing several paragraphs about the Caribbean.

Two articles were published regarding the research conducted at Falk.  The first article, "A Guide to IPA Implementation in the Classroom (pdf)" is published in The Language Educator, and is a guide to help teachers implement the IPA in their own elementary foreign language programs.  The second article, "Research on the Integrated Performance Assessment in an Early Foreign Language Learning Program" (pdf), is published in the Foreign Language Annals, and it focuses on the students’ performance on the IPA and the effects of implementing an IPA in Falk’s elementary foreign language program.

To learn more about research studies conducted at Falk School, visit our webpage for Researchers and Educators.