PEDAGOGICAL SKILLS

This integrated performance assessment (IPA) was designed for novice-mid level university students’ classroom use. The intended purpose of this IPA is to learn public etiquette, specifically train etiquette in the target language culture. After completing the IPA, learners will have gained ability to interpret posters of various public transportation rules and etiquette and know how to apply their knowledge when they ride trains in Japan.

IPA has a capacity to integrate authentic assessments into classroom instruction in that its design aims to have a positive impact on teaching and learning practices by improving learner's performance through the connection between classroom experiences and assessments. The nature of the performance-based assessment tasks in IPA mirrors the tasks and challenges learners will face in the real world. Rubric guides students’ task completion and the teacher’s scoring, and feedback plays a role in enabling students to improve their performance on future assessment tasks. The structure of IPA is characterized by a multi-task assessment featuring three task stages, each of which reflects one of the three modes of communication – interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational – as outlined in the ACTFL guideline. All four language skills are introduced in an integrative and sequential manner, in which learners are carefully moved from comprehension tasks to production tasks (Adair-Hauck et al., 2006).