I. Video

His speech seems to be marked by a mixture of a foreign accent as well as an accent from a Korean dialect which he has probably picked up at home. He needs to improve both his fluency and pronunciation. His presentation on his life consisted of sentences in the creative and formulaic range connected by conjunctions. There were grammatical errors but he was able to narrate in a chronological manner.

II. Portfolio

A. Writing/reading
(story summary, book report, information report, creative writing)

The majority of Cesar's portfolio consisted of samples of his writings. Many of his sentences are formulaic, but he is making many attempts to recombine formulaic expressions which result in new creative sentences. The artifacts show that he is able to comprehend and summarize a story into his own words, report on a factual event, write a book report as well as write an essay about his life just to name a few of his acquired skills. As a result of his increasing competency to write, his writings are getting longer and more interesting to read because of his use of various sentence structures. It looks as if he should improve his handwriting, spelling and grammar as well as increase his vocabulary.

B. Listening/speaking (listening comprehension)

He included one sample which shows his ability to listen to a story that was read to him and rewrite the gist of it in his own words. Judging from his rough draft, he needs to work on his grammar and spelling

C. Tests

His performance on tests ranged from grades A to C. Most of his errors were grammatical.

Cesar's oral and written proficiency seem to be fair in comparison to the other students of his group. He needs to work on his pronunciation and perhaps his fluency when speaking. Also, he needs to work on his spelling and grammar in his writing. Despite these areas that need improvement, it is evident through the artifacts that he has made some progress in his writing ability for he is starting to use a variety of sentence structures.

His COCI rating was created mid. His ability to comprehend seemed to be better than his ability to produce utterances. However, despite the use of some literal translations from English in his Korean speech as well as some grammatical errors, he was able to understand and provide the interview with the appropriate responses. In Cesar's case I do not see that much of a gap between his spontaneous oral performance and his practiced one as was seen in the video tape.

At the beginning of the year the teacher gave him a FLOSEM rating of 14 (2 fluency, 3 vocabulary, 3 comprehension, 3 grammar, 3 pronunciation). However, at the end of the year he received a 16 (3 .5 comprehension, 3 fluency 3 vocabulary, 3 pronunciation, 3.5 grammar). This seems to be a pretty accurate description of Cesar's progress.

Name: Cesar

I. Types of Artifacts

Table of contents; videotaped oral presentation; writing activities (e.g., story creating, essays, book report); reading comprehension and listening comprehension activities ( e.g., questions and answers)

II. Quality of Work

The organization of this student's portfolio is average. There is some indication of language growth in his writing samples, but in general the portfolio lacks a diversity of artifacts that show the student's progress in the various skills of language learning. However, based on the various writing assignments, it is clearly evident that Cesar's writing ability is in the created high range. Although he tends to write very colloquially, there is some evidence that ideas are beginning to flow across paragraphs. He seems to be able to use various sentence constructions, but he still needs to work on his grammar in particular verb forms and spelling. There is also some evidence that he translates Korean into English in order to comprehend its meaning. That is, in many of the question and answer activities, Cesar had translated the Korean sentences into English which was not a requirement of the activity. Cesar also needs to try to improve his penmanship. It was often difficult to decipher the syllables of the Korean words.

II. Language Growth

Although Cesar tends to write as if he were speaking, his writing has improved a great deal in that he is able to convey meaning clearly through written form. There is also some evidence of planned paragraphs emerging from Cesar's writing. His COCI rating for both years is created mid. He still needs to work on his fluency in expressing his thoughts more clearly and completely. However, his pronunciation had improved tremendously in that his dialectal accent that was so prominent in his speech last year had diminished this year.

Cesar's FLOSEM ratings show that his oral proficiency had greatly improved over the past two years. Although Cesar has shown some improvement in his oral proficiency, the FLOSEM ratings seem to be an over-assessment of his present oral ability. The final FLOSEM rating indicates that he is at a near-native like stage in his oral proficiency. In my opinion, his oral proficiency is not quite at that level. He still needs to work on expressing his thoughts and ideas in oral paragraphs. Cesar received an A for the 1994-95 Fall semester, and A- for the Spring semester. During the 1995-96 Fall term Cesar received a grade of A, grades were not submitted for the Spring semester for 1995-96.

Return to Chapter 3: Portfolios as Assessment Devices

Summaries of Three Students Enrolled in High School Japanese Program:

Summaries of Two Students Enrolled in High School Korean Program:

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