Four Easy Steps to a Successful Foreign Language Homeschool Class - Step 4
/Step 4: Use NYS Regents Assessment for your final exam.
The same summer I discovered TPRS, I also discovered New York State Regents exams! Actually, I’d taken them myself as a NY student, but I didn’t realize that past years’ exams are available online. Use them - they are objective, and save you soooo much time. One great advantage is they don’t test grammar or vocabulary directly, just fluency - listening comprehension, ability to converse spontaneously, reading and writing. There is the NY State Regents Proficiency test, generally taken after one year of a foreign language. And the NY State Regents Comprehensive test, generally taken after 3 years of a foreign language. For my Spanish 2 classes, I took half the questions from the Proficiency test and half the questions from the Comprehensive test. Also, I didn’t give a complete test - a full Regents is three hours long, but I only included 90 minutes worth of questions.
The Regents exams are available for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin and Hebrew (Comprehensive only).. For the Listening, Reading and Writing Sections with answer keys and grading rubrics, use these sites (about 8 years' worth of exams at each site):
Proficiency Exam: http://www.nysedregents.org/loteslp/home.html, then click on the language you need.
Comprehensive Exam: http://www.nysedregents.org/regents_lang.html, then click on Foreign Languages.
For the Speaking Section, you need a list of topics, the directions and the grading rubric.
A really long list of speaking tasks (topics):
http://www.mtsinai.k12.ny.us/highschool/academics/teacher/tomlinson/Regents/SpeakingTasks.html
Below are links to explanations of how to administer the speaking section with rubrics for how to grade it. I practiced the speaking section with my class a few weeks before the final. This helped all of us get familiar with the process.
Proficiency: http://www.frontier.wnyric.org/cms/lib/NY19000265/Centricity/Domain/106/RegentsPacket1(examexplanation).pdf
Comprehensive: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/fl/archive/555m-regents.pdf
There you have it, my Four Easy Steps to a Successful Foreign Language Homeschool Class! Four easy steps that promote continued language learning (through the power of TPRS/CI), and personal growth (through conversing and sharing life in class). Furthermore, these steps don’t require enormous amounts of teacher prep time (A TPRS class itself is simple to prepare for, and the websites I’ve mentioned really help with homework and finals.). I invite you to try out any or all the steps. And please, please feel free to share your homeschool language teaching suggestions in the Comments below!