Classroom assessment tools and students’ affective stances: KFL classroom settings

The growth of KFL (Korean-as-a-Foreign-Language) programmes in the US college setting has been truly remarkable in the last three decades. However, despite the gradual and steady growth of the non-heritage student population, the predominant group has been heritage students in most KFL programmes. In addition, teaching these two groups of students effectively has been a key concern for KFL teachers and administrators. For example, KFL programmes in the US have been geared toward teaching heritage students due to their dominant presence. However, the drastic increase in non-heritage student population calls for change in the KFL curriculum. The goal of this paper is to report the use of CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques) as a possible pedagogical solution, in dealing with this complicated issue. The paper visits the current pedagogical and administrative issues, dealing with the two student groups of KFL programmes in the US college setting, and suggests the use of CATs as a possible solution for the matter, in particular, its beneficial merits in enhancing affective stances of students. The paper argues that CATs can be valuable tools in most teaching contexts, especially for the class with mixed student composition. Although the cases presented in this paper are from a third year Advanced Korean course, the techniques presented may be adapted for use in nearly any foreign language course that has struggled with the heritage and non-heritage student issues.