Language

 Foreign and classical languages were one of the foci of our Quality Enhancement Plan. Briefly, we offer nine languages:  Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.  Students may use any of these to fulfill the requirement of passing at least one course at the 300 or advanced level.  At the 300 level (the fourth semester, as languages are numbered here) a student should have considerable facility in speaking a modern foreign language and be able to read at least documents and journalistic prose (Japanese, Chinese and Russian), if not serious works of literature (Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, Italian, German).  Meeting the requirement often entails a student's taking other courses leading up to that level depending on the student's prior experience and abilities in the language.  A significant number of students take additional language courses beyond what is minimally required, and 40 percent of our students study abroad, although not all choose to learn in a setting that requires them to use their second language.

This year we have begun to use the on-line placement instruments provided through Brigham Young University to make initial placements in French, German, and Spanish.  For each of these nine languages, the QEP includes statements of learning goals appropriate at the 100, 200, and 300 levels, and specifies how we assess students’ oral, aural, writing and reading abilities.  The general approach to assessment across the different languages was summarized in the QEP as follows:

Language departments will review their courses and placement tests continually to ensure that the expectations for the courses are described clearly and that the statement of expectations and the courses are indeed in agreement.

 Departments should discuss the pedagogies appropriate for different levels and the accuracy of assessment strategies, refining the process of evaluation by examination to measure students’ growing acquisition of language competency.

 Examinations produced by the faculty of our language departments, even if based in some cases on national or standardized measures, assure that the evaluation of students is based on what our language departments state and desire as specific goals. 

Departments will have at least one departmental meeting annually to discuss the effectiveness of both student learning and evaluation at each level.  All language departments will meet together in one assembly periodically to discuss these same topics.  When external reviews of language departments are conducted, the department’s statement of expectations and its evaluation of students who are taking the courses intended to meet those expectations should be among the elements reviewed and measured vis-à-vis other institutional practices.