Tools for Assessing Speaking in an Online Language Class

This year I agreed to teach a fully online AP Spanish class. It has been a challenging and sometimes rewarding e perience! but it has also presented me with some significant technological hurdles to o"ercome. The most difficult aspect for me has been finding ways to assess students# speaking tasks.

The AP Spanish language and culture curriculum $as well as the corresponding e am% is based on standards de"eloped by the American Council on the Teaching of &oreign Languages $ACT&L! '()'%. *hile I ha"e a lot of fle ibility in some aspects of the class! I do ha"e to adhere to the ACT&L standards for assessment. The assessment tasks are based on the three modes of communication! as defined by ACT&L. Those three modes are+ interpretive communication! presentational communication! and interpersonal communication. In interpretive communication the student reads or hears Spanish produced by others, it is oneway communication . the student can#t respond directly to the other person. / amples of interpretive tasks are reading 0ournal articles and short-stories or listening to radio broadcasts and podcasts. In presentational communication the student produces written or spoken Spanish for an audience, it is also one-way communication because there is no acti"e negotiation between the student and his1her audience. / amples of presentational tasks are written essays and oral presentations. Interpersonal communication is two-way in nature, the student communicates directly with another person. / amples of this type of task are email or letter correspondence $written interpersonal communication% and spoken con"ersations $spoken interpersonal communication%.

I ha"e not had any ma0or problems assessing interpretive tasks or written presentational or written interpersonal tasks. The stumbling blocks ha"e come in assessing the speaking tasks . both presentational speaking and especially the interpersonal speaking. I spent the first part of the semester working to find solutions to the presentational speaking tasks! and ha"e ended up with se"eral things that work! depending on e actly what kind of presentation I want the students to do. O"er the past couple of weeks! I ha"e shifted to finding solutions for the interpersonal speaking tasks. I ha"e come up with one tool that I belie"e will work for the most important type of interpersonal speaking task that we need to address in the class.

There has been a fair bit published about teaching foreign languages online. 2owe"er! most of what I could find in"ol"es teaching and assessing "ocabulary! grammar! and writing skills online. The articles either discuss face-to-face classes with an online component $3arrett! '((4% or wholly online classes that assess written skills $Parry! '())%. It has been "ery difficult to find information on how to assess speaking in a fully online class that e ists within a learning platform such as 5oodle or 6lack6oard. 7itiene and 5iciuliene#s article $'((8% seemed promising because it is about de"eloping speaking skills in e-learning classes. 2owe"er I was disappointed upon reading it. They focus on the importance of pro"iding timely feedback to students! but do not mention specific speaking tools that an educator can use in order to get those speaking samples. $I belie"e that they were looking at e-learning language classes that ha"e created their own speaking tools! so finding tools was not a problem.% I benefited from the suggestions that 7itiene and

5iciuliene made regarding strategies for gi"ing students timely feedback! but I needed to find the tools in order to get the student speaking samples in the first place. I disco"ered that I was not alone in my frustration in assessing speaking online. 9icardo-Osorio said that :performance-based assessments such as ; computer-adapti"e tests for oral proficiency ha"e not been fully implemented in foreign language undergraduate programs because of a series of obstacles.< $p. =()-=('% Parry $'())% comes to the conclusion that a blended or hybrid approach to teaching foreign languages appears to be more successful than a wholly online class because of the difficulty with the speaking component. 2e discusses a program at the >ni"ersity of >tah which :scrapped the fully online class in fa"or of something that has worked better+ a blended model that consists of two days of classroom sessions and two "irtual days of online acti"ities. Preparing "ocabulary! reading a te t! describing a painting for a writing assignment . students can do that online.... when they come to class! they spend most of their time orally communicating.< $Parry! '())! p. 6-))%

In order to find tools that I could use for assessing speaking! I consulted with online colleagues and conducted my own online searches as well. I was fortunate that I had taken an online course this past summer through San ?iego State#s Language 9esource Center that introduced me to some new online tools and also pro"ided me with a broader group of colleagues to share ideas with. I was able to come up fairly @uickly with a number of tools that I could try for presentational speaking tasks. The problem I encountered! howe"er! was that the )8 students in my online class ha"e a number of different de"ices and also ha"e a wide range of abilities in working with technology. I had to take things "ery slowly and not

o"erwhelm the students with too many different tools at once. Conse@uently! I began the semester by trying out at most two new tools per week $generally only one%. 3enerally I had to create screencasts to walk the students through the steps for completing the online speaking assignments. Some students were able to pick up things fairly @uickly! but other students needed a lot of help from me which was at times challenging because the two of us were not in the same location. 5ost of the tools are 0a"a based! so that has caused some difficulties. It took one student three to four weeks to finally figure out how to install 0a"a on his machine $he kept insisting that it was already installed! but that turned out not to be the case%. Other students ha"e ipads! and they can#t run any 0a"a based programs. In the end! the students with ipads were usually able to find $or borrow% a computer in order to do a speaking assignment that used a 0a"a based tool. One tool that e"eryone can use $because it doesn#t use any type of computer at all% is 3oogle 7oice. Students call my 3oogle 7oice number and lea"e their presentational speaking task as a message. I had to create a new gmail account in order to use that ser"ice! howe"er! because I didn#t want the students# speaking tasks to get mi ed up with my normal 3oogle 7oice account $which I use a lot%. So I created an account specifically for that class! and set the account to the :do not disturb< setting which forwards the call directly to my 3oogle "oicemail rather than ringing any of my telephones. I am able to download the messages as mpA#s and sa"e them in folders I ha"e created for each student. A couple of students ha"e continued to use the 3oogle 7oice account to do some of the weekly speaking assignments when they can#t make a different tool work. That has worked well! as long as the speaking task has not in"ol"ed any "isuals.

After trying @uite a "ariety of tools in the first se"en or eight weeks of class! I ha"e come up with se"eral tools that I will use for the rest of the year for presentational speaking tasks. The te tbook site has a 0a"a-based recording tool that is workable. The plus is that I can easily assign a speaking task from the book by embedding the acti"ity right in 5oodle and I don#t ha"e to retype instructions. The negati"e aspect is that the audio files are sometimes choppy when I listen to them. Also! if an ipad student can#t get hold of a computer! they can#t do the task. $One girl this week had that problem and asked if she could use 3oogle 7oice . I told her that would work for me.% 3oogle 7oice is ob"iously a good choice because e"eryone has been able to make it work and the audio @uality is reasonably good. 2owe"er! if I want the students to do a more creati"e presentation that in"ol"es "isuals $and that students can post within a 5oodle forum to present to the other students% then 5eograph has been the clear winner. Students can upload any number of images to create a slideshow. Then they record an audio file that accompanies that slideshow. The students and I ha"e en0oyed the 5eograph presentations. I may use 5eograph myself to do the presentation to my /?T B=( group ne t week. $I think it will work in con0unction with at least one other tool.% Once again! the problem with 5eograph is that it is 0a"a-based so the ipad kids ha"e to get hold of another computer to do the task. The standard presentational task for AP Spanish $the one that mimics what they will do on the AP e am% is a two minute presentation without any "isuals! so I can stick with the te tbook site and 3oogle 7oice most of the time.

After coming up with tools that work for presentational speaking tasks! I had to turn my attention to interpersonal speaking tasks. There are two types of

interpersonal speaking tasks for the AP Spanish class . one is a re@uired component of the class! the other would be wonderful for us to do! but is not a re@uirement. The one that is not re@uired would be a real-time recorded con"ersation between two students. 6ecause that type of task is not re@uired! I ha"e not yet begun to e plore tools we could use to accomplish it. I ha"e some ideas . 3oogle 2angout! Skype! *iCID $something that ?a"id Patterson 0ust added to 5oodle this week%! and a component of the te tbook site where students can record skype-like con"ersations between two of them $I#m worried about the choppy nature of the audio files! though% . but I ha"en#t e plored any of them in great depth yet.

I ha"e begun working with ways to do the the re@uired interpersonal task . the simulated con"ersation. In the simulated con"ersation! one half of the con"ersation is pre-recorded! lea"ing '( second gaps for the students to insert their part of the con"ersation. In a face-to-face class! I play the audio file from my computer to the entire class. /ach student has his1her own recording de"ice $for e ample! hand-held digital recorders% that are in the :record< position during the entire task $so that it records both sides of the con"ersation%. The speaker on the audio file begins the con"ersation and the students speak when they are prompted to do so! filling up the '( second gaps.

After some searching! I ha"e found a tool from the Center for Language /ducation and 9esearch $CL/A9% called Conversations that should work. Conversations is designed for a teacher to create simulated con"ersations. The teacher records a line of con"ersation! then sets a time limit for the students# response! then

records a second line! etc. I was "ery happy to disco"er this tool. I thought it would be "ery simple to use Audacity to clip the original audio file into the "arious segments and then upload each into a line of the Conversation. 2owe"er! I soon disco"ered that it would not be that simple. Conversations is not set to upload a recording, you ha"e to record the audio directly into it. That would be fine if I wanted to use my own "oice! but I should use the "oice from the original audio file. I ended up playing the original audio file on one computer through e ternal speakers $using audacity so that I could keep careful track of e actly when the segment that I wanted began and ended% and then used a second computer to record those segments. The result was @uite good. Once I had created the conversation! I embedded it into 5oodle! in a spot hidden from the students $the con"ersation needs to be embedded into a site in order to be used%. I tried doing the con"ersation! and then logged into my account to listen to the result. The audio @uality was @uite good! so I think I ha"e come up with something that will work. The problem is going to be the ipad kids. Once again! it is a 0a"a-based program. The folks at CL/A9 say they are working on something that can be used on Ipads! but they don#t know when that will be out. 5y hope is that students will be able to borrow a computer whene"er we do this task. $I can think of a workaround for ipads! but it will be time-consuming for both me and the students and may also be rather confusing for them. So at this point I am going to see if I can a"oid that.% I created a screencast demonstrating how to the simulated con"ersation and ha"e put that up along with the first simulated con"ersation as part of ne t week#s 5oodle assignments. I will make ne t week#s assignments "isible tomorrow! so I will know within the week how it goes.

In the presentation I do for my /?T B=( group! I will include ' simulated con"ersation artifacts. The first one will be an original audio file with the '( second spaces for the student response. The second one will be a student sample of that same task. $I pro"ided my students with those same artifacts so that they understand what they are e pected to do.% To see if my /?T B=( group understands! I will create a simulated con"ersation $in /nglish% for them to do using the Conversations tool. I will know if they :got it< when I recei"e their simulated con"ersation submissions.

*orks Cited

3arrett! Eina. FComputer-Assisted Language Learning Trends and Issues 9e"isited+ Integrating Inno"ation.F The Modern Language Journal 4A $'((4%+ G)4-H(. Academic Search Complete. *eb. '' Oct. '()A. Iolegi0a! Alytaus. FApplication of Criteria-referenced Assessment and Dualitati"e &eedback to ?e"elop &oreign Language Speaking Sills in the Conte t of /teaching1learning.F The Quality of Higher ducation B $'((8%+ )B'-G). Academic Search Complete. *eb. )4 Oct. '()A. Parry, Marc. "Foreign-Language Instruction, Digitally Speaking." Chronicle Of Higher Education (2011 ! "10-"12. Academic Search Complete. #e$. 1% &ct. 201'.

9icardo-Osorio! JosK 3. FA Study of &oreign Language Learning Outcomes Assessment in >.S. >ndergraduate /ducation.F !oreign Language Annals H).H $'((8%+ B4(-=)(. "IC. *eb. '' Oct. '()A.

FStandards for &oreign Language Learning+ Preparing for the ')st Century.F ACT&L! '()'. *eb. '= Oct. '()A.