New Grading Structure

I still want to do standards-based grading.  However, students are bending and breaking under the demands that we're currently putting on them by grading them based on performance.

Someone pointed out to my supervising teacher:  There will always be interest in Spanish.  As a Chinese teacher, I couldn't do that - I wouldn't have any students!

Under the stress and pressure of getting a good grade, kids give up and check out.  So, how can we help them simply enjoy the language and class time, as well as give them grades that reflect their abilities?

First, I stand by the structure for standards-based grading, with having most of their grade based on re-testable standards that they may work on all semester.  Then, 15% of their grade is a mid-term and final (I think you should be able to pass a test to get an A), and maybe 5-10% for other stuff like participation and homework, but I'm thinking that may be unnecessary and even burdonesome.

However, I think I want to change my standards.  True, proficiency should be based on Reading, Listing, Speaking, Writing - but how can I measure these in a way that reflects what they're truly learning?  This is all about comprehension.  I'm finding traditional tests aren't able to accurately measure what my students know.  They're picking up a lot of the info - just not the questions we're asking them.  Plus, I given the nature of TPRS, it's not very important that they learn my specifically chosen words.  Who's to say those are the most important words for them to know?  Of course, I'll emphasize the words most useful to learning the language, but students are constantly picking up other words.  They're still learning and improving!  I want to reflect that.  So here's my idea for testing:

Reading/Listening (for example, 50 points): Read/listen to a paragraph, (for example, 5 sentences), and translate.  4 points per sentence: 0=no there; 1=a few words translated correctly; 3=mostly translated correctly, get the main idea and some details; 4=translated perfectly.
**Shorter sentences and passages for lower level)

Writing: Based on number of words and comprehensibility
Speaking.... Still working on this :)