Scribd
Upload
7 views4 pages

Proposal

Uploaded by

afandena256
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
7 views4 pages

Proposal

Uploaded by

afandena256
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

A Proposal to Increase The Academic Outcome of The BA Program

To,

Head of The Department of English

This proposal is divided into section for each idea in isolation, so the arguments are made
clearer. The aim of this proposal is to maximize the utility of the time period of the program (the
years of study). Some of the notes are about the academic plan and the overall goal, others are
about a method that can motivate students to work off campus more.

Before proceeding I will lay out some basic assumptions that I will rely on: i) a good
undergraduate major is that which prepare you to lead a good career; ii) A ‘English Language’
program is, ideally, aiming at give students the training/education needed by the most specialized
persons; and iii) Linguistics-Applied Linguistics-Translation-Literature are independent
academic fields from each other AND certainly do not fall under the English language umbrella,
but integrated into the program for many reasons, but not subclasses of English as English is a
language and teaching it falls under the specialization of Applied Linguistics and not vice versa.
To clarify the last assumption, each of the fields can be used/applied/found in other languages
and not exclusive to English.

Sorry if these ideas had been discussed or presented before. I will lay out basics (as starting
points) for each ideas and they certainly can be further improved and discussed.

1. PARTICIPATION ONLY FOR PARTICIPANTS

This is to make the best use of ‘participation’ marks. I suggest, first, to maximize them to 20 (at
least), so that students care about them and work for them. Then, assessment becomes periodic
every 2-4 weeks marks are assigned proportionally. For students who do not ask, answer, or
discuss in class should always get zero (e.g. from five), so that: a) marks are earned; and b) they
work during the next period, i.e. the coming weeks. The students who participate in class and are
active in class should get the marks.

This is because, as you know, being engaged in class exponentially increase the likelihood that
the student understands the material fully and has more motivation to ask if he did not
understand. If this is applied in all modules, in theory, students chances in working in class and
better understand the material should multiply.

2. WORK OFF-CAMPUS

This mostly effective with new students. Once a student’s enrolled in the program, he begins
installing the new academic culture of ‘what it means to study in university’. If they get used to
do tasks off campus for some grades, that would prepare them to do more difficult tasks in the
future (e.g. readings) and would improve their English proficiency as classes alone are certainly
not enough. This is, also, to depart from the traditional homework approach. It could, for
example, be applied by exploring a set of YouTube videos and discuss them or answer questions
about them in class (say for 5 marks). A bonus for this is that it enables students to self-study as
many students are oblivious to what and how they do it. So, some guidance toward the right path
will, first, help their language a lot, and prepare them for future challenges.

3. LITERATURE-TRANSLATION RATIO

This section assumes that students should, ideally, study more of the subjects that they are more
likely to make use of (in their career), and that some subjects require more training than others.
This section suggests that the literature-translation ratio in the plan is disproportionate to the
premises mentioned above. There are 17 hours for literature to only 11 hours for translation. This
section does not at all assumes that all subjects should have the same portion of the academic
plan, as they vary in their utility and required training. If anything, it should be the reverse for
the following reasons: i) While literature allows for students to pursue higher education in the
relevant academic area, so does translation (1-1); and ii) Unlike translation, literature is not
useful if a student does not decide to do a master’s degree, as translation is needed for many jobs
without a master’s degree (1-2). So, it is translation that should get the higher proportion, not
literature. Translation is a practical profession that needs a lot of training and certainly deserves
more than 4 courses. The utility of such courses should be compared to those of literature on the
basis of the needs of the job market or other practical reasons. In short, students may need to
know more about translation and less about literature.

4. APPLIED LINGUISTS AS THE CHOSEN ONES

If there are any people who are specialized in teaching (English) language, they are the people
who are specialized in applied linguistics (especially those in TESOL/TEFL). If only specialized
people taught English (skills), the outcome should, in principle, be much better. Linguists,
translators, and certainly people who studied literature have had no training in teaching language
whatsoever. It is perhaps driven by the misconception that linguistics, applied linguistics,
translation, and literature are just fields of English and, of course, whoever studies any of these
areas should qualify to teach English. But nothing could be further from the truth. Only applied
linguists who actually study and discuss issues related to language teaching and are, therefore,
better equipped to deal with language students.

Moreover, given that some portion of students may go to teach English, perhaps including more
courses about TESOL and TEFL is a good idea at the expense of less needed courses. By less
needed courses I mean the ones from literature that I discussed above. Also, there are many
linguistics courses that are not core to linguistic theory. A good introduction to linguistics might
involve the core areas: phonology, phonetics, syntax, morphology, semantics, but other that
those should be an extra option or avoided all together. If more emphasis is needed on
linguistics, perhaps a course in carrying out a scientific study/experiment would be much more
useful as it will introduce them to the science of linguistics, and would allow them to acquire a
lot of research skills needed in academia.

5. MONITORING THE OUTCOME

For each semester/year, a non-marked test can be given to soon-graduates to measure the
outcome of the program as a whole. It will give the opportunity to empirically measure the
progression in the development of the program and allow us to reflect on what exactly are the
weak spots.

Thank you so much for allowing the opportunity to share my ideas with you.

You might also like