The role of task and task-based assessment in a content-oriented collegiate foreign language curriculum

Abstract

This article explores the role of task and task-based assessment in a collegiate foreign language (FL) department that shifted its entire undergraduate curriculum from a form-based normative approach to a language-use and language-meaning orientationfor instruction. It examines how the demands for specificity that characterize task-based assessment contributed significantly to an enhanced knowledge base and a new educational culture on the part of practitioners, faculty and graduate students, primarily in literary cultural studies. Deeper insights were obtained not only in terms of assessment but also with regard to the relationship between (1) curriculum, instruction and learning goals and (2) outcomes in such an adult FL program and, ultimately, with regard to possibilities for an expansive interpretation of the notion of task itself.