testing proficiency

[Mary Ann Corbiere]

Aanii Monica,

The comments by Michael, Conor and Meg are totally in line with my sense of the best approach to take. Adeptness at 'spitting out' various inflections spontaneously and in expressing thoughts in ways that sound entirely 'natural' and not contrived are more meaningful indicators of proficiency. Breadth of vocabulary -- while some basic level is important -- is not as critical for a teacher to have. 'Fluent' speakers would be able to incorporate any term they just learned (e.g. the verb n'giigdin or the noun jiikaan) readily into their speech and if a noun's gender is not readily surmised by them, they would nonetheless deploy inflections in a fashion consistent with what they assume its gender to be -- for example, saying upon learning what a jiikaan is, "Aaniish enaandek niwin jiikaanan?" versus "Aaniish enaazat giwi jiikaanan?" (I notice the occasional mother tongue speaker of Nishnaabemwin who still uses the language much or most of the time making missteps like "Aapji go gii-mnopgodoon giwi bkwezhgaansak" quite regularly.) 

Being able to demonstrate grammatical consistency by doing such things as using verbs and inflections that agree with noun gender are the sorts of skills that seem would be the more critical. In this regard, I agree with the comments that conversations and role-playing would serve as good ways of gauging that sort of proficiency.

M. Corbiere

>>> Monica Macaulay <mmacaula at WISC.EDU> 11/13/13 11:15 PM >>>
Good morning,

I was talking to some of the people who work on Menominee language revitalization last week, and they were talking about how they need some sort of tool for testing the proficiency of their teachers.  Since this is way out of my area of expertise, I said I'd ask around.  Do any of you know anything about this?


It would seem to me that any such tool would have to be specialized to work for Algonquian languages (and more specifically in this case tailored for Menominee).  I mean, you would have to know whether or not to test things like conjunct order, right?


And one further point:  such an evaluation would ideally (I would think) be tied to a curriculum - another thing they're working on.  But is it possible to do any kind of testing without that?


Thanks for any leads or hints you can give me.


- Monica


Monica Macaulay
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin
1168 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706
phone (608) 262-2292
fax (608) 265-3193
http://monicamacaulay.com/




 
 
 



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