二年計畫
(Fall/1999  ~  Spring 2001)
結案報告
I。第二年工作重點
II. 兩年工作檢討與展望
編號 課程名稱
教師
8
語言測驗 與 語言學概論
 
Yun-Pi Yuan
袁韻璧 
 I。第二年工作重點:
 

I. 第二年工作重點
In addition to continuing teaching one section of Introduction to Linguistics (with Prof. Nash as the teacher for the other section), another course I taught this year was Language Assessment.  

Internet Resources  
My assistant helped to set up the website for each of the courses.  She tried to set up an on-line message board for the assessment class, but for some reason she has not succeeded.  And we have made some useful links to some websites on testing, such as the language training center and the MOE (especially related to 國中基本學力測驗) websites.  I plan to add more other pertinent links (e.g., ETS and some university databanks of all sorts of exams) when I update the homepage in the future.  These links would be useful when students have to find information for their test evaluation.  
  
In-Class multiple stimulation
Since assessment is a new subject matter for our students to study, they all find it rather interesting and challenging.  In addition to class lectures (on topics such as assessment/evaluation/test; good characteristics of tests: reliability, validity, and practicality; item analysis; test construction; test evaluation; alternative assessment, etc.), students working in small groups had to work out an assessment plan for a certain class or create a paper-and-pencil test on their own.  Besides, they also had to critique an existing test/assessment plan.  Like what I have been doing in my linguistics class (please see our website and Appendix I, my talk on March 3 at the Seminar on College English Courses and Multiple Teaching Methods held at National Central University), in this class I also tried to employ multi-modality of teaching to accommodate students of different learning styles.
  
Student evaluation
As to the student evaluation of the courses, report writing/discussion with group members (for Linguistics) and test construction and test evaluation (for Assessment) were very well received.  Students all thought that they had learned a lot from doing the project and discussions with their group members.  Most students also thought positively about the employment of computer software (for Linguistics) and website.  As some of them pointed out in the semester-end course evaluation, “I think to use the software of computer and project it on the screen is a good way for teaching.  It’s quite interesting,” and “今年多加了多媒體教學﹐使較困難的部份比較了解﹐如語音部份網路資料﹐可看到sample report, 但希望有study questions的答案上網.”  However, many students also complained about the technical difficulties that they encountered in the use of Internet resources.  Sometimes they could not get on using Internet Explorer; other times they could not download the materials from our homepage, etc.  Some of them also thought that the materials they could got from the website were not rich enough.  But obviously the linguistics report sample on the website did help them a lot in terms of the MLA format and ways of conducting academic reports, as shown in their reports.
    
II. 兩年工作檢討與展望
  
Actually, most of us have been teaching multi-intelligently without being aware of it.  This project helps us to see our own teaching more clearly and helps bring the concept of multiple intelligences to our awareness.  Another big exciting contribution of this project is the development of a conceptual map linking many different English Department courses.  While discussing what we have been doing in each of our courses for this project, we found that a lot of important concepts discussed in different courses are actually closely related.  The very same term, such as reader response, employed in Reading class is also mentioned in some literature courses, perhaps with a different interpretation and/or focus.  And students may not have noticed it.  Our job then, is to help them see the connections among related concepts in different courses.  Prof. Nash (one of the teachers of this project) is already making a big wall chart, on which listed some related concepts in different courses.  Eventually, we hope to produce a website with such connection links for students to review or preview what they have learned and will be learning in different courses in the department and/or in different departments/programs.  I believe it would make a significant contribution and exploit the concept of interdisciplinary teaching and the use of website to a great extent.
As I mentioned in my talk at the seminar, however, the copyright problem and the technical difficulties involved in the use of Internet remain the biggest unsolved problems for us.  With the increasing popularity of on-line teaching and application of the Internet resources, the aforementioned problems obviously need to be resolved as soon as possible.

Appendix I

The Multi-modality of Introduction to Linguistics

Yun-Pi Yuan
  
Research has shown that students have unique learning styles and strategies, and teachers also have preferred teaching styles.  Learning styles are generally described as cognitive, affective, and perceptive traits that indicate how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to their environment.  In most research, learning styles are described as points along a continuum between two opposing styles; while a few students occupy the far ends of the continuum, many others have multiple learning styles that allow them to switch styles according to their environment and the task at hand.  Even so, we should still try to accommodate the range of learning styles and strategies possibly found in the classroom, and to avoid the unchangeable unitary teaching styles that we teachers might unconsciously employ.  As teachers, we always want to improve our teaching.  One way to improve our teaching, I believe, is to add more variety in our teaching, and thus our teaching can become more interesting.  With such awareness, Introduction to Linguistics, a required course for Fu Jen sophomore English majors, is approached multi-modally.
  
Now, I will show the multi-modality involved in this course by briefly explaining how this course is conducted.  To have a better learning and teaching effect, there are two sections, taught by two different teachers respectively.  The class size of each section is around 45.  As you know, Introduction to Linguistics is a basic introductory course, which covers a wide range of topics, and there are only two teaching hours per week.  Therefore, we lecture through most of the class time.  In addition, we also try to provide students who prefer cooperative and experiential learning situations with the chance of in-class group discussion.  [Here, let me show you a sample of the discussion questions.]  Ideally, at the end of each topic, students will have a chance to discuss in small groups some related issues to the topic being lectured in class.  (But, unfortunately, we often run out of time to have this group discussion.)  Another cooperative learning activity, which is well received, is the written report.  Every semester students have to do a written report in pairs or small groups of three on one of the assigned topics of their own choice.  For example, these are the five topics for this semester: questions in Chinese morphology, the syntax of spoken language, interpersonal meaning, borrowed words, and language scrapbook.  In this way learning occurs not only in the classroom, but also outside the classroom since they have to discuss their report with their group members and/or with the teacher.  In addition to the written report, we also make use of activities such as Question of the Week and exercises to enhance regular teacher-student interaction and help the teacher to know more about individual student’s learning.  Besides, students are required to complete their textbook reading for each topic discussed in class.
Affectively, we pay much attention to provide our students with a supportive learning environment both in class and out of class.  We give immediate feedback in their learning (such as returning their Question of the Week and exercises as soon as possible).  We are concerned about student reactions to the lecture, and encourage in-class participation and questioning.  For fear that they might not have enough time or chance to ask questions in class, we set up the message board on the web along with other course materials (such as sample report, report guidelines and answers to some of their exercises).  [If time permits, I can show you our course website and its link to other relevant websites later].  Besides, my students can also reach me during my regular office hours, and by telephone or email.  We also try to choose materials that are interesting, authentic, and motivating.  For example, when we have to explain the derivational processes, such as compounding, reduplication, and borrowing, we use examples in both Mandarin and Taiwanese in addition to the English examples.  Moreover, the main textbook used for this course was particularly written for local student body since many examples in the book actually draw on Chinese language and culture.  As a result, students feel much more interested and are motivated to learn more since there is relevance to their life.
  
In terms of perceptual learning styles, this course provides opportunities for visual, auditory, and kinetic/tactile learning.  Visual perception is utilized by students in reading and in conducting observations and watching videotapes of observations for their report, (especially when they choose “gestures” as their report topic in the first semester).  Listening to class lectures, discussions, computer software, and audio recordings for their report involves auditory perception.  While students take the exams, complete exercises and Question of the Week, operate the equipment (such as video cameras and tape recorders) for data collection for their report, and write the report, they are learning through kinetic perception.  Furthermore, taking notes of class lectures and for report, and operation of the keyboard and mouse of a personal computer to access the website is also kinetic/tactile, of course.  The employment of computer software (such as Dr. Speech and Accent Coach) in teaching phonetics and phonology also allows for kinesthetic movement since students are invited to speak into the microphone to match their pronunciation and intonation with the model on the computer.
  
Introduction to Linguistics has been an important course for language majors.  However, due to the limitation of the teaching hours and the broad scope of the topics, traditionally this course could only be approached as information passing through lectures, in which students had no chance to apply what they have learned in class through observation, data collection, data analysis, and critical thinking.  They simply memorize passively all the crammed stuff.  On top of it, linguistics is also too new a subject for our students and they do not know how to approach it.  Many of them cannot see why they should be required to study linguistics since it seems not meant to help them improve their language.  Not surprisingly, linguistics has become a boring and dead subject for study, which cannot arouse any interest in the students.  The present design of the course utilizes students’ multiple intelligences through the involvement of group and individual learning, intellectual and affective learning, different modes of perception (namely, visual, auditory, and kinetic/tactile), and all the modalities of language (i.e., reading, listening, speaking, and writing) and different language varieties (such as English, Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Japanese).  Apparently, students feel more interested in learning, participate more actively in class, and interact more with the teacher outside the classroom.  We feel positive about multi-modal teaching and learning.  However, there remain some problems with regard to the use of the Internet.  Ideally, we would like to put up all our exercises and handouts so that we can present a more complete picture of our course content on the web for interested visitors and learners.  In reality we cannot do it for fear of the copyright problem because many of our classroom materials are directly taken or adapted from other books.  Furthermore, there are always technical difficulties.  For instance, students often complain that they cannot get on because the server is out, or because there is traffic on the Internet, or for some other unknown reasons.  With the increasing use of the web and Internet application, these are definitely urgent problems to be solved for all of us.  Finally, this present two-hour per week course will become three hours beginning next academic year.  With more time available in the class, we would also like to find out how we can make it even more multi-modal.