Creative assessment in Modern Languages
Finding new ways to assess MFL students creatively is one of the aims of this project. Creative assessment could be described as any artistically inspired exercise aimed at the measuring of student performance. ‘Creative’ in this sense means that the assessment should invite students to do things differently – to explore border violations through art practice and to artistically explore states of ‘not-yet-knowing’. Examples could range from creative writing exercises to assessed short films, recordings of performances, audio files, podcasts, music, photography etc.
Fernando Castellano-Banuls, the current research assistant for this project, presented a paper on creative writing and graphic novels in MFL in 2020. The paper describes the project he undertook at a Spanish public school, which included what we could call a creative assessment. For this project, students were meant to create their own graphic autobiographies in the target language, as well as make an oral presentation about it. The project's results show very positive engagement with the target language and a significant increase in motivation in the classroom. Details about this project can be consulted here.
As part of Creative Modern Languages, we hope to gather as many examples like the aforementioned as possible. The examples that we collect will be part of a future open access hub, which will promote and make visible examples of good practice in Modern Languages.
If you use creative methods of assessment in your classes, please consider contributing to our project by filling up this questionnaire. Your contribution is essential for the correct development of the project. We have set an initial deadline for the questionnaires on the 30th of June.
I’m not sure I can contribute with examples, but I want to help. What can I do?
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