At the end of 8th grade, students take the 8th Grade Proficiency Exam.
This is a summative assessment which can cover any of the vocabulary topics and grammar that students have learned in the past two years of Spanish.
There are four sections to the test:
- Speaking
- Listening
- Reading
- Writing
The speaking portion of the test is done toward the end of the school year, during the school day. Students sign up for times during study halls, lunch or 11th period. Each student will come in and have four mini-conversations with me based on topics chosen at random. The conversations have to include four statements from the student. Students get two chances for each statement. Points are awarded based on appropriateness and accuracy of each statement. A quality point is also awarded based on the overall quality of the conversation.
The listening, reading and writing portions are done during a written exam held in June. The listening and reading sections are multiple choice. For the writing portion, students will choose 2 out of 3 topics to complete two writing passages of 30 words each.