California Foreign Language Project: Research and Publications

Less-Commonly Taught Languages
in Selected Elementary and Secondary Schools in California

Student Portfolios

Name: Mark

Level: 3

Date of Evaluation: July 1995

Comments:

Write: His passage was very good. He was able to make his own sentences. During this year, more complicated phrases and useful expressions were taught in class. The questions about shapes and directions were very complicated and difficult to express in writing. However, he did a very good job on these questions.

Read: There were many opportunities in the portfolio to see the students ability to read across situations including reading comprehension questions, vocabulary quizzes, Kanji translations, etc. Since his performance was almost always perfect on tests, I assume that his reading must have been good.

Listen: Most tests had listening comprehension questions and he was able to answer many of them.

Speak: He appeared nervous during the video taping, but his pronunciation was very clear.

Culture: He learned a lot of cultural information through out the year as evidenced in materials in the portfolio.

Vocabulary: His Kanji writing of new vocabulary words was very beautiful.

COCI Rating: Formulaic High

FLOSEM Score:

10/25/94	Total score = 15	(C--3, F--3, V--2, P--4, G--3 )
2/1/95	Total score = 15	(C--3, F--3, V--2, P--4, G--3)
7/15/95	Total score = 15	(C--3, F--3, V--2, P--4, G--3)

Name: Mark

Level: 4

Date of evaluation: July 16, 1996

(1) Types of Artifacts:

Table of contents, student's notes, kanji quiz, worksheets, an essay "Why Japanese is fun" in Nov., fall final exam (86%), spring final project (dialogue), two essays written in class for CWCA (within 15 min.).

(2) Quality of Student's Work:

As long as writing was focussed, the quality of his ability to produce creative sentences was very high.

(3) Organization of Portfolio:

During the first semester, he prepared all the material for the portfolio including his table of contents and self-evaluation. However, during the second semester the organization and work in the portfolio decreased in quality. The student didn't do what he was supposed to do because of his philosophy or what he claimed was a widely approved custom at the school which according to an essay in the portfolio indicated that seniors didn't have to do homework. The teacher did supplement his portfolio with materials including two of his in-class essays for the CWCA which were written on the same day, June 12th.

(4) Student's Language Growth:

Writing: I believe he has great potential in writing in Japanese. One CWCA written sample (topic #1) was to take only 5 to 10 minutes while the other CWCA (topic #2) took 15 min. to write. Both essays were written in class, according to the teacher's note. There were some English words remaining in his Japanese sentences because he didn't use a dictionary or seek assistance from the teacher. His writing showed that he express himself with a range of sentence types in Japanese. I rated his CWCA essays as Created Low, but near Created Mid. Overall, he showed improvement in writing was throughout the school year.

Reading: His reading skill was okay, but with some foreign accent.

Speaking/listening: Both speaking and listening skills were very good.

Comparison of this year and last year's portfolios:

Last year's portfolio showed that the student's writing skill was already high, but I still see even more improvement in this year's writing samples. The student growth in the oral skills (listening and speaking) appeared to be much slower than his development of writing. The teacher's ratings on the FLOSEM support my impressions of the student from the COCI and content analysis of the portfolios.