A Reflective and Archival Record of Communicative Competence and Cultural Experience
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Welcome to the Lafayette World Languages Portfolio Project: A New Model for Mapping Cultural and Communicative Competence in Foreign Language Learning
What is an ePortfolio?
The ePortfolio is a digital archive that documents the achievement of specified goals and learning outcomes within language learning. It also functions as an educational blueprint of learning opportunities in and beyond the classroom. Because students document their learning throughout their college careers, the ePortfolio provides a unique vehicle for tracing the evolution of language proficiency and cultural competence. Rather than basing assessment solely on traditional exams or papers, the ePortfolio showcases what students can actually do with a language.
Why is an ePortfolio useful? The ePortfolio:
- Facilitates students' reflection on their goals, the learning process and their individual growth.
- Helps students to draw connections between different courses and learning that occurs beyond the classroom.
- Underscores the continuity of learning that occurs before and beyond the college experience.
- Highlights multiple literacies
- Provides a venue for building a dynamic, on-going resume.
- Encourages dialogue between students and faculty to determine which projects and writing assignments best represent a student's linguistic and cultural competency and that should, therefore, be included in their archive.
History of the ePortfolio
The E-Portfolio or LinguaFolio is an ongoing assessment archive that is seeing increasing use in the United States and Europe. In the United States alone, sixteen states are currently engaged in various stages of development and/or implementation of a LinguaFolio.
The Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at Lafayette was recently awarded a Faculty Initiative Grant to develop innovative, outcomes-based approaches to language-teaching and learning. In a discipline that involves the development of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills as well as knowledge of the myriad aspects of culture or cultures related to the language of study, it is extremely difficult to measure proficiency. The Language Portfolio is a cutting edge concept that seeks to encourage a multiplicity of approaches to assessing cultural and communicative competency.
For a more select list of recent studies of the use and benefits of ePortfolios, click here.
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