Purposes: 1) show integrative understanding of assessment, broadly defined, in the profession of language teaching; 2) encourage attitudes and practice the skills that develop leadership in the profession in the area of program development, research, and acquisition of resources.

Outline: Produce a "Big Idea" for a professional activity that involves assessment. The core of the project will be a draft PROPOSAL for exploring, through assessment, a question of interest in the area of language teaching and learning (either or both). The assessment should NOT focus on "lab-experiment" testing, but rather on classroom teaching and learning. REPEAT: The project is a PROPOSAL; you don't actually carry out the project.

Products: Description of the assessment activity and its related background, justification, secondary literature, and assessment tools (whether you find them or make them). The entire package should not take up more than 10 pages (appendices OK); remember that proposals for million-dollar grants are often restricted to just 30 pages, with very precise specifications for font, text size, margins, etc.

Due: end of quarter

I can entertain considerable variety in your ideas, within two large specifications: The projects have to be about language-related assessment, and they cannot be conventional term papers. Narrower specifications: 1) The project needs a focus - what are you aiming to learn / do about assessment? 2) There must be investigation of the secondary literature. 3) There must be a narrative about what you plan to do in the way of assessment. 4) There must be a reflective element. The project can take various exposition forms, such as: a project proposal; a grant proposal; a skeleton MA thesis proposal. Plan to have an "idea statement" (paragraph) or a request for help with an idea within a week from when the assignment was activated. "Language-related assessment" can include program, curriculum, (e-)textbook, student attitudes, even testbank assessment as well as straightforward language assessment. You do NOT have to carry out research with learner populations; a PROPOSAL for such research would be sufficient.

If it will help give you perspective on your project, think of it as an idea that could be carried out with the support of a $1000 grant, such as PSU indeed has for assessment projects. Proposals for such grants are often only a few pages long, and the labor they envision is often what could be accomplished by a graduate student earning the $1000 at $25/ hr., with a professor doing a similar amount of work, though of course not paid from the grant.

Evaluation: The following link is to the scoring guide for this assignment. If you read the scoring guide before you complete your assignment, you will know exactly what to do to get the score and grade you want.

Here, mostly as abstracts from professional journals, are some examples of what such "Major [or Super-Major] Projects" are like when they are actually carried out:

Bernhardt about web-based placement testing (0100abs); Donato about lack of progress in language learning in upper-division courses (0104abs); Gascoigne about effect of feedback on writing activities (0173abs); Price et al about students' perceptions of language study and requirements (0177abs);

About the language you write: English is preferred; if that is your native language, use it. If English is not your native language, you may use any of the following without further consideration: Spanish, French, or German.

Problems? If you do not understand the terms of this assignment, or for some other reason encounter some obstacle in carrying it out, contact the course instructors. Such contact, at least until the process is abused, will count as "on-time" completion of the activity.