Welcome to the SBLA Lab!
Our Story
The Scenario-Based Language Assessment (SBLA) Lab was founded in 2016. This project is an international collaboration based out of the Applied Linguistics and TESOL Program at Teachers College, Columbia University in NYC. Currently, we are partnered with Columbia's Korean Language Program, the University of Maryland's Persian Language Program, the CILS Center at the University for Foreigners of Siena (Italy), and the American University in Cairo (Egypt).
We, in the SBLA Lab, believe that second and foreign language (SFL) assessment (and pedagogy for that matter) should endeavor to mirror the kinds of meaningful contextualized activities we engage in in real life--that is, the kinds of activities we need to be successful in in home, school, and work situations.
We warmly invite you to learn more about our projects and we hope you'll join us in our mission.
Our Mission: To contribute to improved and innovative ways of
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conceptualizing, engineering, delivering, and scoring second and foreign language assessments
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reporting SFL assessment results and insights for summative and learning-oriented purposes
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justifying the claims we make on the basis of SFL assessment
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reimagining how SFL assessments and assessment information can be used can be used to indicate and moderate performance in classroom and standardized assessment contexts.
Our Appreciation: We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Teachers College for supporting this project over the years. We are also enormously grateful to an anonymous donor, who believed in this project from the beginning. Thanks to their generous support and encouragement, we have been able to make this project a reality.