The Curriculum

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the IEP at the University of Pittsburgh has been accredited by the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation since 2005. The accreditation process requires programs to provide very detailed accounts of the planning and implementation of assessment practices (described in Chapter 3), as well as a range of other requirements with regard to administration, facilities, faculty, and student-related standards.

In order to be a full-time student, visa regulations require students to be in class a minimum of 18 hours a week. Full-time students at Pitt’s ELI are enrolled 20 hours per week in five courses that meet four days per week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesdays are reserved for homework, laboratory work, and extra-curricular activities. Examples of these are engagement with community organizations, trips to local museums and sites of interest, and conversation partner activities with University of Pittsburgh students.

In the pages that follow, a description of the intended progression in the program in each skill, from Level 3 to Level 5, is provided. In the Appendices to this chapter, the ‘horizontal’ or integration of each skill at each LEVEL is provided, including details of textbooks, grading criteria, exit criteria, and typical activities. The descriptions follow CEA

The IEP at the University of Pittsburgh 29 requirements, which are posted online (http://cea-accredit.org/about-cea/ standards). In this context, all three curriculum standards are relevant:

Curriculum:

Curriculum Standard 1:

The curriculum is consistent with the mission of the program or language institution, appropriate to achieve the organization’s goals and meet assessed student needs, and available in writing.

Curriculum Standard 2:

Course goals, course objectives, and student learning outcomes are written, appropriate for the curriculum, and aligned with each other. The student learning outcomes within the curriculum represent significant progress or accomplishment.

Curriculum Standard 3:

The instructional materials and methodologies are appropriate and supportive of course objectives.

It is important to understand the differences among ‘goals’, ‘objectives’, and ‘student learning outcomes’. The CEA notes for this standard (http://cea-accredit.org/images/pdfs/2018_CEA_Standards.pdf) state that ‘goals’ are the overall intended outcome of the course, ‘objectives’ are ‘what will be taught’, and the ‘student learning outcomes’ (SLOs) are stated in terms of ‘what the student will be able to do’ as a result of the course - namely a functional outcome. Thus, these SLOs must ‘be written, observable, measurable, and able to be expressed in terms of academic readiness or practical applications’. These guidelines are consistent with language learning for a purpose - in our case, language for use in academic and professional settings. As might be expected, Level 3 goals are to build knowledge adding a range of linguistic tools (vocabulary, structure) in more constrained contexts. Level 4 involves consolidation of what is learned at Level 3, adding increased task demands and enhanced control of complex language. Level 5 focuses on refining and extending what is learned at Levels 3 and 4 to contexts not directly familiar to the student. Verbs used in the goals and objectives reflect these aims: Level 3 - ‘develop’, Level 4 - ‘improve’, and Level 5 - ‘refine’.

As the data will derive mainly from speaking, grammar, and writing classes, this section will concentrate on those curricula, but the goals, objectives, and SLOs for listening and reading are provided in the Appendices to this chapter.

The Speaking Curriculum – Goals, Objectives, Student Learning Outcomes

The Speaking curriculum from Levels 3 to 5 in the ELI concentrates on encouraging the development of accurate and fluent monologues and dialogs. The goals, objectives, and SLOs are extensive for each level, so this section will concentrate on the main points.

At Level 3, one goal states that 'Students will learn to create short written and spoken texts to express their own ideas and to represent the ideas of others’. At this level, more emphasis is on basic structure and pronunciation. Level 3 SLOs state that students will be able to create short spoken texts that include topic sentences and supporting ideas, describe a chart or series of pictures, and create an oral summary of a text. In addition, they will be able to engage in dialogs on topics of personal relevance. The goals and objectives discuss the linguistic means (question formation, simple embedded clauses, target vocabulary from the Academic Word List, and pronunciation foci).

At Level 4, one principal goal is that 'Students will interact via responding to written texts and interlocutors & eliciting written or spoken information on personal, practical, social, and general academic topics. Interaction will include clarifying and negotiating meaning. Students also will be introduced to abstract topics’. The SLOs are similar, but stipulate longer text length (three to seven minutes for a prepared, original spoken text, with an appropriate structure that includes an introduction, appropriate support, and a conclusion. The added features include the control of appropriate transitions, which indicate comparison/contrast, opinion, and a summary. Linguistic tools included at this level include awareness of register for social and academic topics, control of r/o-support with question formation and negation, and control of the modal system. Overall, the Level 4 curriculum SLOs are much more specific regarding the linguistic goals than are the SLOs of Level 3.

For Level 5, one principal goal is that ‘Students will learn to create medium-length and long multi-paragraph written and spoken texts to express, extend, and elaborate their own ideas, to represent, extend, and elaborate on the ideas of others’. Thus, by Level 5, the focus is on reporting complex ideas of others and expressing an evaluation of those ideas. The linguistic focus is similar to Level 4, but the requirement is an extension of variety of structure and more focused control of accuracy.

One particularly important part of the curriculum during this period was the 'Recorded Speaking Activity’ (RSA), details of which were published by McCormick and Vercellotti (2013). The RSA is still used in the IEP as of 2019-2020. As part of a focus on feedback and selfcorrection, this activity involved the students recording a two-minute monologue in the laboratory using Runtime Revolution software; then the students transcribed the speech and were encouraged to write down

The IEP at the University of Pittsburgh 31 exactly what they had said without corrections. The next step was to correct any errors that they had noticed in notes. Finally, the students were asked to re-record the speech, incorporating the corrections that they had noticed. These data will be discussed in much greater depth in Chapter 6 on speaking.