Focused Inquiry Group (FIG) College Wide Learning Goal: Communication – Speaking Results & Analysis Fall 2010 Angela Hobbs, ESL Instructor Course: ESL 111B (Academic Listening & Speaking) What I did: The students in ESL 111B gave 3 organized speeches throughout the semester ‐ I used their final speech to assess the CLO “student can make a short presentation and answer relevant questions.” Since we had been working on a unit on multiculturalism, and had listened to lectures related to workplace diversity, students had to give a short speech in which they researched a company's diversity policy; explained it, and then gave reasons why (or why not) they would like to work at this company. Results: Participating in the Speaking FIG was very valuable for helping me with a rubric to evaluate this CLO. I used the same rubric categories as the Speech Communication department, except just modified it slightly to put pronunciation under Verbal Communication. Students in my class performed better in Preparation and Organization and not as well in Verbal and Delivery. This wasn't unexpected for me, given that I had many students who were still at a very low level in their ESL core classes (there is no prerequisite for ESL 111B), and I evaluate pronunciation and grammar in their speaking pretty rigorously since it is an ESL speaking course. I would recommend those teaching this class in the future to utilize the rubric we developed, as it was easy to use and adapt; I subsequently used the rubric (with same categories) to 5 points in each category in order to give them a grade on a 20‐point scale. What I Learned/Recommendations: Before students gave their presentations, I showed them several samples of "good" and "bad" informative speeches, paying attention especially to delivery, which is something that really came alive for them when they saw the difference between a cold, monotone delivery, and one in which the speaker was fully engaged with the audience. I used samples of both ESL students and native speakers, which I believe was really valuable. In the future, I would perhaps have them use the rubric to evaluate the samples, so that they understand how the rubric is used when they are evaluated on their own speech. Perhaps the ESL department (or Language Arts as a whole?) could collaborate to get a collection of student speeches on video to use as teaching tools. All of my samples were ones that I found on YouTube. I also recommend videotaping the students’ speeches and having them do self‐evaluations of their speaking. I only did this once this semester (at the end), and I think it was mostly beneficial for them to see themselves speak. Some of them were not able to look critically at their own speaking abilities, but some of them were really able to reflect on what they did well and what they needed to improve on. I posted videos to Blackboard so they could watch themselves privately. I would do it the same way again.