Language Center Staff Updates

Please welcome Caroline Vang back to the Language Center. She has rejoined the department in the position of Classroom Support / Professional Development Specialist. Caroline assisted with classroom support coordination during Spring 2013. Since then, she has completed her MA in the ESL program, with a research topic related to Japanese heritage learners. She taught ESL full-time this summer, and plans to combine her work at the Language Center with teaching Fall 2013.

We also have a new Assistant Office Coordinator: Rachel Sherman Johnson. Rachel is new to the Language Center, but not to the university. Rachel just returned from South Korea, where she has been working as an EFL instructor. She is a PhD student in CIDE. She previously worked at this university's Learning Abroad Center, and also served as the Coordinator of Asian Studies for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University.

We also wish congratulations and farewell to Jenny Boe and Meghan McFadden, who have completed their degree or program and are moving on to teaching Fall 2013. Jenny received her MA in ESL, and Meghan completed the SLC M.Ed initial licensure program for teaching K-12 French and ESL. Both Jenny and Meghan have been with the Language Center since they were undergraduates, and we are fortunate to have had them in our department for so long, and in so many roles. Jenny has served as an undergraduate Office Assistant, a clerical employee, and both an Assistant Office Coordinator and a Classroom Support Coordinator. Meghan started out as a Classroom Support Assistant, and has provided leadership in almost every area at the Language Center since, serving as a Classroom Support Coordinator, interim Lab Coordinator and part of the Testing development team.

TandemPlus Summer Update

The TandemPlus summer session is coming to an end. With the registration for summer now closed, and virtually all possible matches completed, Tandem matched 63% of interested students, and served a total of 149 participants. The most commonly matched languages were English & Spanish and English & Japanese.

The most common partner requests were English speakers seeking Spanish speakers, Chinese speakers seeking English speakers, and Arabic speakers seeking English speakers. Unfortunately, few Arabic language students registered this summer, although we did see an increase in Chinese language learners. We hope to see this number increase in the coming year. In other words, if you are learning Arabic or Chinese, please sign up for TandemPlus!

Easier Alternatives to Oral Interviews

Formal and informal assessment of students' spoken language is used by most language departments, commonly as one-on-one interviews with the instructor. This can put a huge strain on instructors as they are responsible for not only proctoring and grading each interview, but also: coordinating interviews with each student (which usually takes up several class dates), finding equipment to record the interviews, and figuring out how to access the recordings. Fortunately, the Language Center computer classrooms offer a variety of alternatives to one-on-one oral skills assessment!

All four of the LC classrooms can be used as a Digital Language Lab (DiLL). The DiLL uses an intuitive software interface that allows you to carry out the activities of a traditional language lab. You may already be familiar with the DiLL for informal speaking activities in class, but a growing number of language departments (Spanish, Chinese, ESL) are using the DiLL for graded speaking tasks.

The DiLL allows you to pair students (one-on-one or even small groups) and then, with the press of a button, they can record their conversations! You will have easy access to student recordings which are saved automatically to the DiLL server. Recordings can be played online or downloaded for easy access anywhere. What normally took days of class time will require less than one class period.

In my own experience, I have found that pairing students, rather than interviewing each student myself, produced more natural language and students felt less nervous, because they were working with their classmates and not their instructor. However, if you prefer to assign assessments that are individual, especially if you are focusing on accuracy, the DiLL is capable of this as well.

The DiLL also allows you to simply record students individually by giving them a prompt in advance or you can speak with the whole class (via the DiLL) and record their responses. You can even use a pre-recorded prompt, which allows students to listen, pause and record. Students can have multiple attempts, if the goal is accuracy. And again, each student's individual recordings will be available for you online immediately after they are submitted.

The DiLL is a great way to easily collect speaking samples from all of your students in the amount of time that you might normally spend interviewing one student. Their recordings are available immediately and can easily be accessed for grading, or even downloaded to share with the student. If you would like to learn more about how the Language Center classrooms can be used for oral assessment or if you would like to schedule a one-on-one training on how to use the DiLL, please contact us.

Have you used the DiLL for oral assessment? What was your experience like?

TandemPlus Event: Summer Pizza Social

On Wednesday, July 3, 2013, TandemPlus hosted its summer event, a Pizza Social. The event was cozy and personable with approximately ten attendees. Guests broke into two groups and exchanged friendly conversation about cultural differences and the difficulty of learning a new alphabet. Everyone enjoyed lunch from Mesa Pizza and lemonade.

Congratulations Kate and Welcome Baby Boy Knisley!

Congratulations to Kate Clements and family, and welcome Baby Boy Knisley who arrived Monday, June 24 around 9 am, weighing 7 lb 14 oz.

Kate will be on leave for the next eight weeks. In her absence, please refer TandemPlus questions to Bri Lopez or email tandem@umn.edu, and Lab questions to Meghan McFadden or email elsie@umn.edu.