Our Mission: To contribute to improved and innovative ways of
conceptualizing, engineering, delivering, and scoring second and foreign language assessments;
reporting SFL assessment results and insights for summative and learning-oriented purposes
justifying the claims we make on the basis of SFL assessment
reimagining how SFL assessments and assessment information can be used can be used to indicate and moderate performance in classroom and standardized assessment contexts.
Our Appreciation: We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Teachers College for supporting this project over the years. We are also enormously grateful to an anonymous donor, who believed in this project from the beginning. Thanks to their generous support and encouragement, we have been able to make this project a reality.
The SBLA Lab members and our partners are the invited to present their work at the 2022 Joint AAAL/ILTA Symposium in Pittsburgh. The title of the symposia is: Exploring the cross-linguistic insights of using scenario-based assessment across four typologically different languages. The abstracts are available here.
We will also be presenting our work in a symposium (same title) at the 2022 Language Testing Research Colloquium in Tokyo, Japan. Information about LTRC 2022 can be found here.
James E. Purpura
Citation: Purpura, J. E. (2021). A Rationale for using a scenario-based assessment to measure competency-based, situated second and foreign language proficiency. In M. Masperi, C. Cervini, & Y. Bardière (Eds.), Évaluation des acquisitions langagières : Du formatif au certificatif. MediAzioni 32: A54-A96, http://www.mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it. ISSN 1974-4382.
Abstract: In an effort to provide a theoretical rationale for the use of scenario-based assessment to measure competency-based, situated second and foreign (S/FL) proficiency, this paper traces conceptualizations of S/FL proficiency since the 1960s along with the major approaches to measuring these conceptualizations. The distinguishing characteristic of this evolution is that, as the construct broadened, the more complex the assessment methods became and the greater the potential for meaningful interpretation. This paper argues that while language-based, independent and integrated skill-based, and task-based approaches to S/FL proficiency assessment can be useful in certain assessment contexts, they are not engineered to measure S/FL proficiency in contexts of situated language use – that is, where goal-oriented task accomplishment is located within a sociocultural context, and where the ability to achieve complex tasks is embedded within the mediated engagements and social practices of a particular community. For this reason, some researchers have turned to scenario-based assessment (SBA). This paper describes how SBA has been used in the mainstream and S/FL assessment contexts, highlighting the affordances of this approach. Finally, the paper illustrates how a learning-oriented approach to assessment (LOA) (Purpura & Turner, 2018) can serve as a comprehensive conceptual assessment framework for engineering and validating SBAs.
Open access information can be found here.
Questioning the Currency of Second and Foreign Language Certification Exams
In his Distinguished Speaker Series, Professor James E. Purpura, Director of the SBLA Lab, questions the currency of traditional approaches to L2 assessment, arguing that present designs limit their capacity to provide examinee information that is needed and valued in the real world. He argues for a learning-oriented approach to assessment as a design framework for constructing scenario-based assessments capable of measuring a broadened array of constructs, and providing better interpretative bases for educational decisions.