- 1. Practice writing Korean characters. This particular activity required practice in combining the consonants and vowels to create syllables. He seems to have grasped the concept involved in combining the vowels and consonants to form syllables. However, at this stage the strokes in his handwriting seem slightly unnatural. However, throughout the year, his handwriting did improve.
2. Learning log. There are vocabulary, grammar and spelling exercises included in the log. William seems to be putting a lot of effort into his studies. His log is neat and there are hardly any repeated spelling or grammar mistakes. The two logs also show progress in William's writing, reading and listening abilities.
3. Honorific. William also had practice with the informal and formal. He seems to have a firm grasp of the uses of the informal and formal forms. Also, his sentences were consistently correct in their verb tenses.
William's test performance was outstanding from the beginning to the end of the year. This obviously reflects the amount of effort he is putting into his studies.
C. Listening/Speaking Activities
- 1. Dictation/Review Questions. William's first attempt at dictation considering that it was towards the beginning of the year was quite good. Although he made spelling errors, he seems to have gotten the gist of combining the consonants and vowels to form the syllables. In his second attempt at the end of the year, his ability to write down what he heard was near flawless. Also, William was able to read and answer questions in his own words without any difficulty. There are hardly any spelling or grammar errors and the sentences were written in the correct verb tense.
2. Cooking. William's group discussed the procedures and ingredients involved in making kimbab. Despite a few spelling mistakes, William was able to write down the elements his group had discussed.
3. Show and Tell Peer evaluation. William was able to write some complete sentences describing the emotional experiences of his classmates. For some cases he was only able to get down a word of two. There were some spelling and grammar mistakes as well.
William's writing ability has improved with great success throughout the year. From being able to write only a series of short formulaic sentences, towards the end of the year his sentences consisted of some conjunctions and prepositional phrases. For example, "I looked into the mirror and then brushed my hair". His writing style read more smoothly. There were hardly any spelling, grammar or verb tense mistakes. William's strongest point in writing is that he is able to tie the sentences together in the paragraph with a connecting thought or idea.
Overall Comment:
There was great progress in William's oral and written proficiency. His written proficiency seems to be a little better than his oral proficiency. His works show that he has put much effort into his studies. He also has a large vocabulary. William shows great potential to be a successful language learner.
William's COCI rating was formulaic low. He was able to understand some of the questions and was limited in being able to answer the questions. However, there seems to be quite a difference in his performance between practiced oral presentations and spontaneous oral activities in that his oral proficiency in the practiced presentations seemed to be much better than his proficiency in the spontaneous activities. Nevertheless, considering that it is his first year, his oral proficiency is appropriate.
William received a 6 at the beginning of the year for his Flosem rating. (1 in everything except pronunciation in which he received a 2). At the end of the year he received a 11 (2.5 comprehension, 2.5 pronunciation, 2 vocabulary, 2 fluency, 2 grammar). It is with total agreement that William has shown much development within the past academic school year.
Name: William
I. Types of Artifacts
Videotaped oral presentation (group puppet show - "The Ant and the Pigeon"); creative writing samples (e.g., paragraphs, summaries, dialogues); comprehension exercises (e.g., listening and reading); grammar/ vocabulary exercises (e.g., verb tenses); table of contents
II. Quality of Work
The organization of the portfolio is high-average. There were a variety of artifacts and in the table of contents the student specified what skills the activity targeted. There were also reflective notes posted on every artifact which showed what the student learned from the activity. In comparison to last year's portfolio, there was a decrease in the number and variety of materials included in the portfolio.
This student's writing ability is in the formulaic mid range. Although there are many grammatical errors in particle usage and verb endings as well as spelling errors, William seems to have made progress in being able to use transitions and varied sentences structures in his writing. The majority of his sentence structures are simple, but towards the end of the year the paragraphs are showing evidence of complex sentence structures. It is evident from his writing samples that there is a growth in his writing styles. He is able to describe events in chronological order as well as summarize concisely and also describe processes.
III. Language Growth
As was the case last year, William seems to have made more progress in his writing skills than in his oral skills. There was no development in William's COCI performance. He received a formulaic low both years. Although he has good pronunciation and seems to have fair listening comprehension skills, he had difficulty formulating expressions orally. His writing skills seem to have improved from last year. Although he still needs to work on his spelling and grammar, he is starting to break apart formulaic expressions and is not as dependent on formulaic sentence patterns.
The FLOSEM ratings indicated that William has improved his oral proficiency in both years. William had low oral proficiency at the beginning of this school year; however, he has made rapid progress in his oral proficiency. His ratings increased a whole level at the end of the year. However, the FLOSEM ratings indicate that William is at a much higher oral proficiency level than what the COCI rating shows. In sum, William seems to have put a lot of effort into his studies. He received an A for both semesters last year as well as the 1995-96 Fall semester. His writing skills have also improved over the past two years and according to his FLOSEM ratings, his oral proficiency seems to have improved as well. However, he may need to work on being able to speak more spontaneously in impromptu situations in Korean.
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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