Latin is Alive and Around Us
The message of ALIRA is simple: Latin is alive and all around us. ALIRA reflects this firmly-held conviction through the wide variety of texts that it uses—from antiquity to 21st Century social media. Below is a description of some of the texts, topics, and items at each level.
Novice:
- Supporting pictures: Test takers read excerpts from stories typical of those that appear in Latin textbooks and select the image from ancient Rome that supports the excerpt.
- Lists: Lists of tasks, chores, rules or other text from today's Latin classroom as well as those from ancient Rome.
Intermediate:
- Short classical texts: These are short texts that appeared in ancient Rome.
- Short modern texts: These are texts that come from today's online Latin sources such as YouTube comments made in Latin or Wikipedia entries.
- Dialogues: These are written dialogues excerpted from a play.
- Video game texts: Test takers read dialogues from modern video games set in ancient Rome.
Advanced:
- Longer ancient texts: These are longer, more complex texts that were written by the great authors and poets of ancient Rome.
- Longer modern texts: These are longer, more complex texts that appear in today's online sources. They generally represent a narrative such as one might find in a news story.
Validation
ALIRA's design manifests the widely-used, highly-validated principles of proficiency and performance testing wherein test takers are given multiple opportunities to show sustained comprehension of texts whose demands and accompanying question align with author's purpose and the ACTFL proficiency scale. Because the ALIRA is computer-adaptive, the test modulates upwards or downwards based on performance. ALIRA's algorithms evaluate the performance at each level and assign a score.
The ALIRA is a valid and reliable assessment of Interpretive reading. The ALIRA was developed in alignment with a well-defined construct, following a rigorous development process. Items are revised, recalibrated, archived, or reviewed as necessary. Further, new items are added regularly, following the rigorous item development procedures.