Assessment of Oral Language Proficiency

I really enjoyed learning about the Oral Language Analysis (OLA) assessment from the video for this week. To me, this was a strong, thoughtful formative assessment tool because of the incorporation of teacher collaboration. Teachers recorded students' responses verbatim, and that information was used to determine strengths and "approximations." Sometimes, in the moment, it can be hard to analyze and give feedback. The OLA allows teachers to look at the student outputs and reflect as a team. Then, teachers collaborate to find the areas of student need. This work is so meaningful! Teachers can learn, grow, and share strategies through those deep conversations. Plus, the students could even be regrouped, so different teachers may pull small groups of students to support the students with the same approximations. This could work well in an elementary school classroom during a reading lesson when EL students are mainstreamed. Teachers could analyze responses to reading material in small groups, and then provide interventions to support students based on their needs. Instead of basing the group on reading level, the groups could be organized based on approximations/deficit skills, and students could be shared between classrooms to ensure students are receiving their necessary supports.

One formative language proficiency assessment that I could see myself using is the Dos Amigos Verbal Language Scale (Critchlow, 1996) that helps measure the linguistic knowledge of both Spanish and English (Herrera et. al, 2020). I love the idea of giving students two lists in opposite languages and seeing where their dominance and proficiency is at. I looked up a further explanation and example of this assessment as I wanted to know more, and it says that it is useful for grades k-6 (Farnum, 2014). I do think that it can still be useful for high school students depending on their level of proficiency they come to us with, and I can always increase the level of difficulty. The reason I like this one so much, is that it looks at not just one language from a bilingual student. It takes into account the level of language proficiency from both their first and second language. I think this is huge when a student is learning a new language. If they are not at a sufficient level in their first language, it may end up being harder to understand certain concepts in their second language. I also think that provided lists in both languages may help with the affirmation aspect of the assessment. They have the ability to have confidence and familiarity in at least one of the languages being tested.

The information received from this type of assessment may help teachers see some of the underlying causes as to why students may not be understanding certain vocabulary in their second language. They can compare and contrast their abilities in their first language with those that may be hindering in their second language.

The Oral Language Analysis Video was a great example of a formative assessment to prepare for teaching and learning.  The teacher used content to assess the language acquisition the students.  The fact that language a function such as compare/contrast or cause/effect is used helps the students to connect to the topic and demonstrate their understanding of how to analyze text.  This process would be beneficial to all students and I can see it working at the high school level.

The analysis of the OLA demonstrated how collaboration gives insight to perspectives on the evaluation of students that you might not see.  I see the benefits of analysis by grade level or subject specific.  The video showed ELA teachers collaborating and analyzing the student’s proficiency levels bases on how he/she responded to the assignment.  This in returned influenced the chosen standards and the ELD lessons as a next step. I can see this working with grade level teams cross curricular.  Teachers could teach the same concept (compare/contrast) as it relates to their subject.  This will not only allow the students an opportunity make a connection to the concept, but multiple language opportunities. This process will take a lot of planning and teacher training but will be worth the effort