Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

The World Language Teacher Shortage: Taking A New Direction, Peter Swanson, Shannon Mason

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Since the end of World War II, international leaders have made calls addressing the world language teacher shortage. For almost 70 years, such rhetoric has been advanced, yet world language teacher shortages remain in many countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this article, the authors discuss the past and current state of affairs of the shortage before advancing ideas for language teacher recruitment and retention to which a variety of stakeholders (e.g., parents, administrators, language teacher associations) can contribute immediately in order to address the world language teacher shortage in …

Measurement Quality Of An Instructor-Developed Cfl Summative Assessment Instrument: An Exploratory Pilot Study, Shuai Li

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

This study examined the measurement quality of an instructor-developed classroom assessment instrument (i.e., a final written test) used to assess linguistic knowledge covered in an undergraduate elementary Chinese course at a U.S. university. Participants were 222 learners enrolled in the Chinese course from Fall 2011 to Fall 2013. Analyses were performed on a subset of 64 binary-scored (0/1) test items. The 64 items showed acceptable overall test reliability, test discrimination, and Rasch model fit. Meanwhile, insufficient number of difficult items, below-threshold discriminatory power of certain items, and existence of measurement redundancy were also found. Strategies for improving the measurement quality …

Review Of The Flesh Of History Across Borders And Boundaries, By Fabienne Kanor, Gladys M. Francis

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Case Départ: Slavery In Martinique Through The Lens Of Comedy, Gladys M. Francis

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Bearing in mind the limited number of French films on slavery that have been produced in the past decades, there is no overstatement in arguing that French filmmakers have a tendency to circumvent subjects related to slavery and colonization. Though factors underlying this trend are manifold, they nonetheless commonly involve a significant ambivalence on slavery as seen in mainstream print capitalism, history books, schoolbooks, or official discourses concerned with the construction, propaganda, or representation of the French Nation. These inconsistencies and contradictions do not, however, reflect the extensive dealings of France in the slave trade, during a period that spans …

Developing A Test Of L2 Chinese Pragmatic Comprehension Ability, Shuai Li

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Background: This study aims to develop a test for assessing pragmatic comprehension ability in Chinese as a second language (L2). Following the framework of an argument-based approach to test validation, this study attempts to obtain backing for the Evaluation and Explanation inferences.

Methods: Test items were developed based on two sources of authentic language use (i.e., field notes and a corpus of natural language use). Following a series of piloting, 107 examinees of L2 Chinese completed the test (k = 39) in the main study. Among them, nine examinees had retrospective interviews that probed the knowledge, strategies and …