ED465287 - A Validation Study of the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA) - ERIC-ED465287 | Content Details

ED465287 - A Validation Study of the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA)

Source Institution: Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC.; Iowa State Univ. of Science and Technology, Ames. National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center

Subject: Elementary Education, Elementary School Students, FLES, Immersion Programs, Language Proficiency, Language Tests, Oral Language, Second Language Instruction, Test Validity, Testing

Abstract: This study validated the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA), an oral proficiency instrument designed for students in elementary foreign language programs. Elementary students who were tested with the SOPA were also administered other instruments designed to measure proficiency. These instruments included the Stanford Foreign Language Oral Skills Evaluation Matrix (FLOSEM) and the CAL Student Self-Assessment (SSA). Testing sites involved students in either a FLES program, a content-enriched FLES program, a foreign language experience, a two-way partial immersion program, or a total immersion program. Students and teachers at each site completed background questionnaires to gather program information and ethnographic data. Results indicated that the SOPA measured proficiency as intended. The correlation between SOPA levels and FLOSEM ratings were strong, while correlations between SOPA levels and the SSA were relatively low (possibly due to differences in mode of assessment and rating procedures). Overall, the content-enriched FLES program and the partial immersion programs, which had the most variation among students, provided the strongest empirical correlations between the SOPA and the other instruments. (Contains 39 tables and 20 references.