Paula Winke
Inaugural Arts & Letters Professor | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Paula Winke's primary research is on foreign and second language assessment.
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Biography
Paula Winke is the Inaugural Arts & Letters Professor in the College of Arts & Letters and the Director of the Second Language Studies Ph.D. Program in the Applied Linguistics Program in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. Her primary research is on foreign and second language assessment. She researches language-test reliability and methods for creating (and managing) placement and proficiency tests. Paula also researches language teaching methods, with a particular focus on task-based language assessment and task-based materials design. With Aline Godfroid, Paula co-directs the Second Language Acquisition Program’s Eye-tracking Labs. She is co-editor (with Luke Harding, Lancaster University, UK) of the journal Language Testing. From 1998 to 2000, Paula was a Peace Corps Volunteer in China. In 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary, and in 2022, a Fulbright Scholar to Germany. In 2008, she received the CALICO Article of the Year Award with Senta Goertler. In 2012 she received the International TESOL Distinguished Research Award. She received the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Research Article Award in 2020, and in 2021, the Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in World Language Education from the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association (NFMLTA), the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL), and the Modern Language Journal (MLJ). Currently, Paula is serving on a U.S. Department of State Task Force as part of an Interagency Agreement between MSU and the U.S. State Department. With the Task Force, she is advising the U.S. Foreign Service Institute on foreign language proficiency test redesign.
Industry Expertise (1)
Education/Learning
Areas of Expertise (5)
Second Language Assessment
Task-based Materials Design
Second Language Acquisition
Language Test Reliability
Task-based Language Assessment
Accomplishments (5)
Arts and Letters Professorship (professional)
2022
The ACTFL-NFMLTA/MLJ Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in World Language Education (professional)
2021
American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Research Article of the Year Award (professional)
2020
TESOL Award for Distinguished Research (professional)
2012
Outstanding Article of the Year Award (professional)
2009
Education (1)
Georgetown University: Ph.D.
Links (4)
News (3)
Why captions are everywhere on TikTok: ‘Glasses for your ears’
LA Times online
2021-09-23
Paula Winke, a Michigan State University linguistics professor who has researched the educational benefits of captioning, described captions as “glasses for your ears” that can make it easier to parse dialogue. That’s especially important when it comes to online videos that have had speakers’ natural pauses edited out, depriving viewers’ brains of the momentary rest they need to fully absorb what’s being said.
The Case for Abolishing the Citizenship Exam
Slate online
2020-11-24
But, as Michigan State University professor Paula Winke argues, even for those who do pass, the test only measures how well they have mastered the study guides, not how well they know their history or their rights. As educators know, students do not retain material when you teach with a focus on testing.
Quiz: Can You Answer the Hardest Citizenship Test Questions?
The New online
2019-07-03
“Perhaps the greatest problem with the civics test is that it is possible that not everyone takes an equally difficult test,” Dr. Winke wrote in the study.
Journal Articles (5)
Innovation and expansion in Language Testing for changing times
Language Testing2022 As we begin 2022 in a world that is still experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, there remain many challenges on the horizon. For journal editors, these challenges involve the following: remaining sensitive to issues that require quick exploration and explication; thinking of new ways to engage with and bring together a community of scholars that has—in most cases—not had face-to-face conferences for over two years; monitoring submission figures to identify potential inequalities and inequities; and taking a compassionate approach both to authors and to reviewers in managing the demands of scholarship and reviewing in the midst of a range of other priorities (and with many at a point of exhaustion).
Individual characteristics in advanced Spanish proficiency
Advancedness in Second Language Spanish: Definitions, Challenges, and Possibilities2021 In this article we investigated the learner characteristics of 127 Spanish language learners who achieved “advanced” in at least one tested skill (speaking, reading, or listening). We compared their profiles with case-control-matched non-advanced peers. All students took a background survey on their abroad experience, heritage status, use of Spanish-language resources outside of class, and learning interest. We performed a cluster analysis to map the learners’ profiles and found four clusters, one that achieved advanced in at least one skill, and three clusters that did not. An important factor that predicted overall cluster membership was outside-of-class use of Spanish-language resources, with the advanced Spanish learners using authentic Spanish-language resources significantly more.
Background Characteristics and Oral Proficiency Development Over Time in Lower‐Division College Foreign Language Programs
Language Learning2020 Answering calls to map college‐level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower‐division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of their programs), using the Oral Proficiency Interview–computer (OPIc). We recorded students’ gender, heritage‐learner status, high school language experience, interest in learning the target language, perceived importance of speaking, and outside‐of‐class second language (L2) contact, in order to differentiate growth.
Exploring the depths of second language processing with eye tracking: An introduction
Second Language Research2020 In this paper, we review how eye tracking, which offers millisecond-precise information about how language learners orient their visual attention, can be used to investigate a variety of processes involved in the multifaceted endeavor of second language acquisition (SLA). In particular, we review the last 15 years of research in SLA, in which applied linguists have exploited the information gleaned from eye-tracking metrics to advance the field. As we explain, eye-tracking researchers within SLA have diversified which aspects of SLA they investigate and are entering new territory by pairing eye-tracking metrics with other data-collection methods for data-triangulation purposes
ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview–computer (OPIc)
Language Testing2019 A well-known joke1 asks,“What do you call someone who speaks only one language?” The punchline is,“American!” There is some truth to this: Although about 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home, the majority of Americans are indeed monolingual (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017). Nonetheless, second/foreign languages are of critical importance in the United States. The US Government has needs in a number of critical languages (eg, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Urdu), and offers training and proficiency incentives in military, diplomatic, and higher educational contexts. Concomitantly, the US labor market has shown an increased demand for language skills, with more job postings for bilingual candidates in 2015 compared to 2010 (New American Economy, 2017).
