Using a two-year, $800,000 grant from the Institute of International Education, Michigan State University researchers will develop a program to gauge how practices used to measure foreign language proficiency affect language teaching and learning.
The grant is part of IIE’s National Security Education Program, a major federal initiative designed to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills.
MSU is one of only three universities to receive such a grant. The project will be a cross-unit initiative within the College of Arts and Letters involving faculty from the Center for Language Teaching Advancement, the English Language Center, the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages and the Department of Romance and Classical Studies.
Faculty will use the funds to:
- evaluate current language proficiency levels;
- work with programs to meet their goals of promoting global language skills and proficiency;
- document the impact of proficiency assessment on outcomes; and
- share best practices in proficiency-based curricula with other institutions.
“We anticipate this project will have a broad impact on the MSU language teaching community,” said Sue Gass, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages. “Our project team has a deep understanding of language testing, language instruction and language learning and this grant will offer new and exciting insights into current language teaching practices and ways to integrate assessment into those practices.”
Paula Winke, associate professor of second language studies, is co-author of the grant. Gass and Winke will lead the research team, focusing on MSU’s undergraduate Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish language programs. They ultimately hope to increase the number of MSU students reaching high levels of language proficiency.
MSU will serve as a model to institutions regionally and nationally in the effort to advance language-learning approaches and curricula designed to promote proficiency, Gass said.
Formed in August 2008, MSU’s CeLTA is housed within the College of Arts and Letters and assists with the administration and coordination of language offerings, best teaching practices, the sharing of curricula across languages and departments and promotion of service learning and outreach.