Student Progress in Chinese Language Proficiency.

For students in treatment schools, the most intensive of the oral assessments in terms of time (15 minutes per 2 students with 1 interviewer), the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA), will be administered in late spring in Years 2–4, to a randomly selected set of students in each cohort representing 50% of the cohort. The Chinese FLES teachers, who will be trained by the project in the administration (and scoring) of the SOPA, will administer and rate the results. The Chinese FLES teachers will interview each others’ students and a volunteer will videotape the session. A Chinese FLES teacher at another site trained in scoring (and administration of) the SOPA will rate these videotaped sessions. Lynn Thompson, SOPA specialist at the Center for Applied Linguistics, will validate the SOPA ratings. An online second grade assessment instrument in development by the Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon will be administered at no cost as part of the piloting of the instrument to second-grade students in Year 4.

• Research Overview
• Research Design
• Attitudes
• Standardized Assessment