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This page is designed to provide practical resources to support your assessment planning process. The focus is on program and institutional assessment of student learning. The websites and documents listed here are only a sample of the references that are available and should be viewed as an introduction to the world of assessment resources available.

"Margaret Malone, Senior Testing Associate at CAL, discusses four key concepts of assessment, describes free online resources that promote assessment literacy among language educators, and explores how these tools can be useful for all stakeholders"

"Understanding Assessment: A Guide for Foreign Language Educators is a tutorial on language testing for foreign language educators. It is designed to help new users of the Center for Applied Linguistics' Foreign Language Assessment Directory (FLAD) and it is also an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn more about language testing."

The Language Acquisition Resource Center, LARC, is a national Language Resource Center located on the San Diego State University campus. It is one of fifteen Department of Education Title VI funded Language Resource Centers (LRCs). Our mission is to develop and support the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the United States through research, technology, and publications. Particular attention is paid to less commonly taught languages, cross-cultural issues, language skills assessment, and teacher training.

"The VAC is a series of web-based learning modules that provides teachers with background information, step-by-step guidance, and many practical resources on developing proficiency-based second language assessments for the classroom."

Diane J. Tedick, Editor (The Minnesota Articulation Project). This handbook for teachers was designed to provide world language teachers with the background knowledge, ideas, and resources for implementing proficiency-oriented language instruction and classroom-based performance measures into their curriculum. Tied to the national Standards for Foreign Language Education, the Handbook gives teachers a solid foundation of the principles and practices that are central to standards-based and proficiency-oriented language instruction and assessment. The Handbook gives teachers a wide variety of tasks and activities to use in the classroom along with ideas for adapting these activities for different levels and languages and longer curricular packages.The Handbook was originally created by members of the Minnesota Articulation Project. While the handbook is still available in print through the CARLAmworking paper series most of the handbook is now available online.

"Since 1995 the purpose of the Language Testing Resources web site has always been to act as a reference guide to language testing related resources on the Internet by providing a history of, and links to, language testing related information, including publications that are freely available on other domains. However, it's purpose has broadened over the years. Now, resources on language testing, such as articles, features, videos and audio, are made freely available for language teachers, language testers, and students of language testing, applied linguistics, and languages."

"Welcome to the STARTALK Resource Website, home to information on teaching and learning Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Turkish, Swahili and Urdu. The purpose of this site is to share information on implementing programs as well as to share resources on curriculum design, instructional materials, assessment tools, and useful links. Information on our site is particularly targeted toward parents and students, teachers, current and future program directors, an"

The National Institute for Literacy develops tools and guidance to strengthen the teaching and learning of reading in adult education and literacy programs. An online diagnostic reading assessment, based on the ARCS Study, shows instructors how to identify students' reading strengths and weaknesses. Instructors can use this knowledge to target their instruction more effectively.

What does it do? Develops the four skills of language learning Can be used with any language Utilises existing resources; audio, text books, worksheets and graphics Enables live monitoring of an individual student or a group of students Provides private communication between the teacher and student or a group of students Motivates learners of every ability using familiar technology Easy Assessment - All student work is saved as mp3 files or web pages The addition of a headset with a microphone turns any pc network into a language lab How does it do it? Using two small software programmes, a student module and a teacher module, that will run on virtually any pc and network. Items containing text, graphics and audio recordings are viewed by students who can record themselves and can also enter text or make selections. The teacher can communicate to students individually, or by group, and can monitor progress live.

ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com: Voiceboards (an asynchronous speech tool), LiveChat (a 4-way conversation tool), and Voicerecorder (a widget for instant recordings). Each really opens up the scope and sequence of spoken language tasks. Creating media-rich lessons in ANVILL is simple and straightforward. There are templates for audio, video, and image tasks; there are also tools for text-based discussions like blogs and forums. ANVILL's assessment tool,Quizzes and Surveys, gives teachers an easy way to assign and respond to spoken language tasks. In addition, ANVILL is a course management system. Teachers who are doing distance or hybrid courses have a simple means of managing their students as well as their curriculum. We think you'll find that ANVILL is quite flexible, and permits the kind of extra listening and speaking practice that language students need so much. ANVILL is a project of the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon. These tools are currently in use at UO and at a select number of K-12 sites around the Northwest. Thanks to our National Foreign Language Resource Center partners at CASLS, we are able to offer ANVILL to educators at no cost. Here is an overview of its features. If you think it would be helpful to you and your students, contact us to set up an account. Our two-year pilot study has just gotten underway and we're looking for language teachers at all levels to use it and tell us what they think.

"Mahara is a fully featured web application to build your electronic portfolio. You can create journals, upload files, embed social media resources from the web and collaborate with other users in groups." Artefacts can be added and then custom views containing different sets of artefacts shared with different audiences. Other features include: File Repository, Blogs, Social Networking, Resumé Builder, Profile Information, Administration Tools, Interface with Moodle, Scalability, Security, Interoperability

"As part of the VALUE project, teams of faculty and other academic and student affairs professionals engaged in an iterative process over eighteen months wherein they gathered, analyzed, synthesized, and then drafted institutional level rubrics (and related materials) for 15 of the AAC&U Essential Learning Outcomes, creating the set of VALUE rubrics that appears below. "