Professor Angel Arias and Dr. Jamie L. Schissel (University of North Carolina at Greensboro) have received a 2024 joint International Language Testing Association (ILTA) Duolingo Collaboration and Outreach Grant for their proposed work on promoting meaningful assessment in language classrooms in the Dominican Republic.
Professor Angel Arias
The Dominican Republic has prioritized the teaching and learning of foreign languages for decades. Since the 1960s, there has been an emphasis on including English and French in the national curriculum.
“In public schools,” Arias notes, “teaching English and French as foreign languages begins in primary school and continues through the end of secondary school.”
This focus on language education in the national curriculum has led to the further development of language teacher education programs at universities.
“The ILTA/Duolingo initiative,” Arias shares, “seeks to diffuse knowledge of language testing issues and practice worldwide by establishing permanent local organizations that will conduct further practical activities in language testing and assessment in the future.”
In rural areas of the Dominican Republic, there is a pressing need for professional development opportunities to support language teachers.
The grant will serve to establish the Association of Language Teachers for Classroom Assessment (ALTECA) in School District 14-03 of the Dominican Republic in February of 2025.
“Because assessment is often neglected in teaching and learning, this initiative will lay the groundwork to continue offering professional development workshops.”
– Angel Arias, Assistant Professor (Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies) and Director of the Language Assessment and Testing Research Unit (LATRU)
With second language research lagging behind in the Caribbean, Arias hopes to conduct collaborative research to learn more about the different areas of language education in the Dominican Republic.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) has a strong presence in the Dominican Republic, and Arias hopes to connect this professional association with ALTECA.
Arias and Schissel aim to present their report at the ILTA’s Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) in Bangkok (2025) or Montreal (2026).