LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT

CURRICULUM ASSESSMENT ANNUAL REPORT

JUNE 22, 1998

0. Introduction: What is Assessment?

"Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving

student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and

public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning

quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence

to determine how well performance matches those expectations and

standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain,

and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger

institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective

attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic

culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher

education."

--Thomas A. Angelo

This report is divided into four sections. Each section is

devoted to answering one of the four questions posed by the Ohio

University Assessment Committee. Specifically: What are your

Department's Goals? What evidence do you have of accomplishing

your goals? What improvements/enhancements have been implemented

on the above? What changes do you recommend for your department in

future?

1. Department Goals for Student Learning in the M.A. Program.

The Department's goals for students in the M.A. Program are as

follows.

Teachers of English as a Foreign or Second language, upon

graduation with an M.A. in Linguistics, shall:

1. be well grounded in language-teaching pedagogy;

2. be familiar with the structure of the English language in its

phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects;

3. demonstrate analytical skills, including the ability to read,

comprehend, and perform statistical analyses;

4. demonstrate the ability to conduct empirical research in

pedagogy and second language acquisition.

5. present the results of their research to an audience of

professionals, either at professional meetings such as the

International TESOL Conference, or locally at the Linguistics

Department's annual Spring mini-conference;

6. secure meaningful employment in their professional field.

The departmental goals were developed from three sources.

a. Tradition; the Department has been training teachers of English

as a Second or Foreign Language since 1970.

b. Mission Statement adopted November 1, 1994; modified June 11,

1998.

c. Previous assessment activities conducted in 1996 and 1997.

2. Evidence that graduating M.A. students are satisfying the above

goals

Goals 1-3. These are classroom-based goals. Between 1996-

1998, the Linguistics Department undertook four distinct kinds of

assessment activities for the M.A. program, over and above the

regular course evaluations (which were conducted for each class

during the tenth week). During Fall 1997 and Spring 1998, the

faculty analyzed and compared the data collected in Spring 1997 and

Spring 1998, including (a) questionnaires, (b) exit interviews,

and (c) a similar questionnaire mailed to 24 M.A. alumni who had

graduated in 1995.

Goals 4-5. In Winter and Spring, 1998, six (of twenty-two)

graduating M.A. students presented nine research papers at

professional conferences, including International TESOL (U.

Washington), Ohio TESOL, the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference,

and the International Conference on Pragmatics and Language

Learning (U. Illinois). The remainder of the class presented

their research findings at our annual departmental Spring mini-

conference. Moreover, graduating M.A. students also presented the

results of their research projects in the form of a thesis or

proseminar paper. Bound copies of all theses and proseminar papers

are available in the Linguistics office.

Goal 6. Evidence of success in accomplishing Goal 6

(meaningful employment) is adduced from the number of M.A. degrees

granted, and from the subset actually employed as teachers of

English as a second language (in the U.S.) or as foreign language

(abroad).

a. Number of degrees granted. The M.A. program in

Linguistics has granted nearly 600 Master's Degrees since 1970.

(Roughly half were Americans and half international students.)

b. Meaningful Employment. Although employment figures are

incomplete, our distinct impression is that virtually 100% of our

graduates in TEFL/TESL are finding teaching jobs in their field of

study immediately after graduation, either in the U.S. or abroad.

The alumni class of 1995 who responded to the Questionnaire

strongly confirmed this impression.

3. Improvements, Enhancements, and Developments Implemented Based

on Assessment Results

There is considerable uniformity in the opinions of graduating

students and former students (alumni). The following

recommendations have already been implemented.

1. Drop the Theoretical Linguistics track of the M.A. program

(which was weak) and build up the TESOL track (which was strong but

could be even stronger); at the same time, keep the general

linguistics courses whose purpose is to serve and support the

applied/practical program. (Implementation: this was accomplished

by vote of the faculty in June 1997. As the direct result of this

action, beginning with the class of 1999, Theoretical Linguistics

is no longer an option for the M.A. program.

2. Implement the exit requirements vigorously. This

recommendation was a virtually unanimous one from all populations

surveyed over the past three years. (Implementation: starting

with the graduating class of 1998, all M.A. students in Linguistics

must now complete a major research project, present it to an

audience of peers, and write it up as either a thesis or a major

proseminar paper of near-publishable quality.)

3. Give more emphasis to Computer-Assisted Language Learning

(CALL) in the curriculum. (Implementation: beginning Spring 1997

and continuing indefinitely, CALL classes are available both during

the academic year and during the two summer sessions.)

4. Give more emphasis to electives outside Linguistics,

especially Psychology (Psycholinguistics) and Modern Languages

(Video-Assisted Language Learning; Language Lab). (Implementation:

starting the Fall, the incoming class of 2000 will be able to take

two outside electives and count them the same as inside electives.)

4. Further Recommended Changes

Not every desirable change has been implemented. Among the

major tasks ahead for the M.A. program, the following are

especially noteworthy.

1. Add a faculty position in TESOL Methodology and fill it

with a person who can guarantee that the following courses will be

taught every year: Testing, Reading, Writing

2. Improve the level of cooperation and professional exchange

among cognate departments and programs, especially OPIE, Modern

Languages, International Studies, Psychology, and Anthropology.

3. Strive to make certain TESOL Methods courses more

rigorous.

4. Increase the numbers of undergraduate majors to the point

where Assessment at the undergraduate level becomes as meaningful

as it is at the graduate level for our department.

5. Increase enrollments in our non-European languages.

6. Establish a major and minor in Japanese.

NOTES