WELCOME TO CCALT
Welcome to the Chinese Computerized Adaptive Listening Comprehension Test (CCALT)! CCALT measures the student's listening comprehension of Mandarin Chinese and assigns a proficiency level upon the student's completion of the test. The proficiency testing follows the guidelines by the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages. It uses sound algorithms to adapt the difficulty level of the items to the individual student, collecting data along the way for item selection and rating of proficiency.
CCALT is funded by the National East Asian Languages Resource Center at The Ohio State University, and the Graduate College of The University of Iowa. It is an on-going project. In addition to the efforts made to enhance the items for each proficiency level, CCALT's delivery format has morphed from CD-ROM to web-based. The most recent web-based version features new administrative functions, making data collection and analyses user friendly.
Thank you for choosing CCALT! Your continuing support is greatly appreciated!
THE GOAL
The authors of CCALT started the project with one goal in mind: to develop an effective, easy-to-use assessment tool for listening comprehension of Mandarin Chinese. The authors also hoped it would, in the long run, promote Chinese language learning.
Toward that end, every effort was made to ensure CCALT would indeed test Chinese listening comprehension (validity), and generate proficiency ratings consistent to those resulted from known and tested methods (reliability). The test items in CCALT were compiled by Chinese language instructors with ACTFL training, rated and calibrated by certified ACTFL raters, and widely pilot-tested among the target students. Moreover, multimedia was selected to present questions to help students listen in contexts; and demographic and test data was to be collected to help Chinese language teachers make instructional decisions.
WHO SHOULD USE CCALT
CCALT is designed for colleges, universities and high schools in the U.S. with programs of teaching Chinese as a second language. It is a computer-mediated test, generating data for easy identification of students' proficiency levels. It has been used as a language placement test in some universities. It may also be a tool for measuring studentsí achievement over a semester or longer period of studying of the language. Analyses of students' data collected over time can be helpful for the design and revision of the language curriculum.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Management: Chuanren Ke and Zizi Zhang
Instructional Design: Zizi Zhang
Multimedia Production: Zizi Zhang
Pilot Testing and Psychometrics: Chuanren Ke
Test Items: Chuanren Ke, Zizi Zhang, Yi Lin, Dai Chen, Weizhen Lin, Mei-Yeh Chang, Carol Kula, Jungim Chang, Jesse Severe, and Tzu-Hsin Lin
Voice: Chen Shuang, Gang Xu, Dai Chen, Weizhen Lin, Yi Lin and Zizi Zhang
Sponsors: The National East Asian Languages Resource Center at The Ohio State University, and the Graduate College of The University of Iowa
Thanks to Chen & Tsui Company for providing images and sound effects.