Super(ior) Talker

Last week I dialed into the Language Testing Institute (LTI) of ACTFL in order to prove that I can, in fact, speak English.

This officially certifiable oral proficiency interview (OPI) by an ACTFL rater is a necessary step to becoming certified to conduct ACTFL OPIs. In addition to speaking hours interviewing and rating ESL speakers, I also need to prove that I meet the ACTFL guidelines for a superior level speaker.

The interview, which didn't make me nervous, but did make me curious due to the fact that I have only ever done this from the interviewer side, started 20 minutes late due to the interviewer's late conducting of the previous interview. But, since I knew what kinds of speech sample the interviewer needed to elicit from me, I think that we were able to make the conversation move along rather quickly, I was surprised to learn that the interview had only taken about 20 minutes (a typical superior level interview can take 30 minutes), but we had covered a variety of topics and had plenty of samples of superior level speech for her to analyze.

The results of the interview were posted today, and I am, in fact, a superior speaker of English. Surprise! I guess all these years of learning and practicing English have really paid off. What a relief.

Of course this is only one small step in this OPI experience. I still need to get the trainer's feedback from my practice round, and then I will have to work at collecting interviews for my certification round (where I actually have to do a good job as opposed to just learning as I did this summer). Here's hoping the trainer doesn't rush to send me the feedback. I've got enough projects to do.

Although I did accomplish to important tasks today: I got the integrated writing practice tasks sent to the programmer (for pilot testing next month) and I submitted my integrate tasks IRB application. It's all working out, despite my poor planning and procrastination.

Integrated Writing Task

My plans for a dissertation topic revolve around the use of integrated writing tasks. These exam items, used in ESL assessment, require students to write about a reading and listening passage. We are now piloting the use of integrated writing tasks at our center.

Reasons Why We Want to Implement the Integrated Task

• Every semester we inevitably deal with cases of unintentional plagiarism due to students whose summary, paraphrase, and quoting skills are weak
• Most of our students are planning to attend university in the USA and need to learn English for Academic Purposes (EAP) which involves writing from sources
• Integrated writing tasks are now part of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) which many of our students want to take and "pass"

Differences Between the TOEFL's and Our Integrated Tasks

• Our integrated tasks are used in connection with our Level Achievement Tests in order to assess students' readiness to move on the next class level whereas the TOEFL is used to assess readiness for university study which our program only assesses in an indirect form through level advancement
• Our implementation of the integrated tasks will assess student ability from novice to low advanced, namely our Levels 1 through 5; the TOEFL is designed to assess a narrower band of language ability, namely the ability of students in our Levels 4 and 5
  
• The TOEFL tasks are rated individually, but the integrated tasks will likely become part of our holistic portfolio score, or maybe even a subset portfolio score for fluency (non-draft) writing

In order to properly implement these tasks for our own center, I'm conducting a literature review of relevant studies. The first:

• Cumming, A., Kantor, R., Baba, K., Erdosy, U., Eouanzoui, K, & James, M. (2005). Differences in written discourse in independent and integrated prototype tasks for next generation TOEFL. Assessing Writing, 10, 5-43.
  
• This study analyzed a variety of textual features of prototype integrated tasks versus the current independent writing tasks. It suggests that integrated tasks encourage the use of a greater variety of vocabulary and greater use of source ideas. The independent tasks are better at eliciting more language and at developing better arguments from examinees.
  
• I hope to be able to use this study as a model for the quantitative analysis of my dissertation research. Like the Cumming et al. study, I will examine a variety of discourse features and how they differ between responses to our independent and integrated tasks; I will also plan to look at these language features as they differ across our 5 proficiency levels.
  

I'll add more studies as I read them.

Moving forward

I heard back from IRB today. My request to extend my research has been granted. Of course now that I want to do a different (but related) study for my dissertation, I will need to submit a new IRB application.

Why start something new for my dissertation? I'm applying for assistant professor positions (to start next Fall) and one of them is looking for expertise in an area that I haven't focused on very much: oral assessment and listening/speaking pedagogy. Of course I had taught L/S classes, and I'm in the process of becoming OPI certified, but I haven't done much on this topic from a research perspective. So now's my chance.

Truth is, whatever an employer wants me to be an expert in, I can do it. I have only become focused on writing assessment and methodology because:

1) My thesis chair wanted to research it, so I did it for my thesis, and
2) My current job as the writing coordinator requires me to become an expert on it.

So if a potential position requires expertise in something else, I can do it. My revised dissertation project will:

1) Build on my current research,
2) Relate directly to what I do for my job anyway, and
3) Extend my expertise to include research on L/S assessment.

So we'll see how it goes. The fact is, if I want to be ready for these jobs that start Fall 2008, then I need to be all but done my research by then, which gives me less than a year to plan, conduct, and write my dissertation. Heh. Who knows? I could do it. Probably. Maybe. Yeah. And if nothing else, this job application process will motivate me to graduate ahead of schedule. And there's nothing bad about that idea.

Working on a List

I'm doing my best to check items off of my To-Do list. Today, I sent a draft of my article off for faculty review, I emailed off my OPI materials, and I renewed my IRB application. I've got a variety of projects that I can work on this semester, but they are coming at the expense of other duties. In addition to projects and teaching, I ought to be doing more to train and support our teachers, but that isn't really happening. At this point I'm mostly expecting teachers to figure it out by working together or reaching out to me proactively. Hopefully I will catch up with my projects and book in time to support teachers.

Another Push in the Write Direction

The hints have no longer come subtlety. In fact they could hardly be called hints. Demands might be too strong, but mandates is probably not far.

In the past three weeks I have had two professors encourage me to get back to work on submitting my thesis research to an academic journal. I told them that I was working on a collaborative article, but the truth is my collaborators are not collaborating, so nothing is happening.

Then I figured it was time to start getting my job application skills back on track since I'll only been in my current position until 2009. And of course that means adding publications to my CV.

And then today my boss strongly, strongly, strongly urged me to get my article published. A political, greater good sort of thing. And so that's what I have spent this evening trying to do. Write.

And it's not really working. But somehow I will manage.

OPI Round 1 Deadline

The practice round of my OPI certification is coming up next week. I did the training earlier this summer and I conducted interviews all summer long, but my plan to get everything smoothed out and ready this fall got complicated by my busy teaching schedule.

However, I hope to get it all wrapped up and sent off next week before Kimberly and I head to the Grand Canyon for a short weekend trip.

This may not be the most relaxing semester, but at least we are having lots of learning opportunities.

Fresh Start, New Setback

September marks the beginning of a new semester. It will be my first official fall semester as a PhD student after officially being admitted in spring term.

Spring term was useful and busy even though I had the two months off from my job. I spent the time in professional development and in graduate course credits. Summer, however, was more frustrating. I never quite got into a good teaching groove for my teaching, and the graduate course that I took (well, that Kimberly took since the professor held it during a time that I could not meet) was the worst course that I have ever taken. It was poorly organized, poorly articulated, poorly graded, and the instructor still has yet to submit grades even though the term finished about a month ago.

Still, I was ready to let go of the summer and head into a productive fall. Unfortunately I have a heavy teaching load for this semester (my two regular classes, plus a graduate writing class and a a double-section for one of my regular courses), but I am confident that it will work out just fine. I was looking forward to being a student in an interesting technology course, however that plan has been altered. The department, without informing students, has added a required course to the already hefty list of required classes. This new course conflicts with my teaching schedule (yet again), but the instructor has agreed to let me attend for the portions that I can.

I'm not happy with the lack of organization and communication of this department. But then I remind myself that I am not paying for tuition and that regardless of what happens with my credits, it is a great learning opportunity. So long as I approach it with that attitude, I will be less likely to be disappointed and frustrated. And since I never really intended to do my PhD here to begin with, I can feel good about whatever the outcome over the next two years.