ASSESSMENT PROJECT

SPH110 Fundamentals of Speech

Gary C. Vitale

February 18, 2002

Although the catalogue description of this course and my syllabus for it have not changed in many years, there are certain aspects that have grown more prominent through the years, culminating in the publication of my textbook: Practical Principles of Public Speaking, which was written specifically to be used with the way I teach SPH110 Fundamentals of Speech.

The core of the course has remained constant: That is, central to the course is the effective delivery of the short public speech. This makes the course a skills course, and its grading procedures, ratios, and standards all reflect this emphasis on skill. Delivering the effective public speech, however, is not something the ordinary student is likely to have to do more than three or four times during his or her lifetime. That caveat is told to the student on the very first day of class, and it begins one of the emphases of the course that I have come to add through the years, a carefully expressed apologia.

The ultimate reasoning that makes the course worthwhile and necessary for a liberal arts education has been added to the beginning lectures of the course and is referred to at various points throughout the course. The apologia for SPH110, as I teach it includes the following:

• Despite the fact that giving the "podium speech" or short public speech is likely to be a rare occurrence in the student's future, this course concentrates on it because preparing and delivering a public speech requires the student to master certain rhetorical and communication skills that are expected of a college-educated person. This explains why a fundamentals of speech course is a requirement of graduation, not only at SCI, but at most colleges and universities in Illinois.
• Preparing and delivering the formal public speech is beneficial personally to the student in that it contributes to the development of the student's public persona, the formal image (literally, "mask") by which the student wants the world to know him. The complete responsibility that the student has for making the speech and the fact that the student must deliver it personally, in front of the world-as it were-making a public statement that involves the student's thinking and beliefs about the topic should help to form the public person that the student wishes the world to see. I emphasize that the private and the public self must coordinate, otherwise hypocrisy or outright lying occurs. But, at the same time, there is nothing surreptitious about developing a public formal self. Indeed, beginning to develop it may be the first step toward adulthood, moving away from the easy familiarity of childhood. The very first chapter of my text discusses the differences between a public speech and a private conversation, noting that however conversational its language, the public speech is not simply amplified and broadcast talk that happens to be overheard by many people.
• Besides the personal and academic benefits that a student might get from the course, I have also come to stress how mastering the skills of the course is the responsibility of the college-educated person or, at the least, the responsible parent. I point out that, even more so than writing skills, fine speaking skills are believed to be the mark of an educated person-no matter what the language spoken. These skills do not simply involve rhetorical or communication skills, but also include conventional pronunciation and grammar. In at least one of my lectures, I say: "Mispronunciation is to speaking what misspelling is to writing-both are signs of flaws in education, no matter how unfair that judgment might be." Further, I stress that the integrity of any language depends on the educated person who uses that language, so that the college-educated have a special responsibility to the language that the less educated are absolved of.
• Finally, SPH110, as I teach it, relates speaking to writing, showing their differences (in kind and degree) as well as their similarities. I have come to demand a written characterization of the speaker's audience on the speech outline, corresponding to the composition instructor's demand for a writer's clear idea of his reader. I have separated the proposition of the speech from the introduction and body to give it prominence, even though other speech instructors and texts make it a part of the introduction. I have demanded that the proposition of the speech be the student's starting point, telling my class: "The proposition is to the speech what the thesis statement is to the essay." And, I have emphasized that the five classic introductions, the rhetorical figures of speech, and the general speech outlines can all be used just as effectively in writing as they are in speaking. All but speaking's dependence on repetition and vocalisms can be used in writing.

In later years, I have required at least two citations in one informative speech, demanding that the students use "signal phrases" to introduce sources, qualify the source's credibility, and either quote or paraphrase from the source. Sources are listed in a special Works Cited section of the written outline, and no source may be listed that is not specifically named in the speech or germane to its topic. This "footnoting in a speech" forces the student to vocally separate his words-with their particular rhythms and diction- from his source's. This, I feel, helps students understand the difference between their ideas and someone else's, perhaps reducing plagiarism.

Relating the SPH110 class to a college education, to personal development, and to the rest of the English department (it is, after all, called the "English/Speech Department") has been a slowly evolving process through the years. But, I believe all courses-not just English courses-should be subjected to this kind of general assessment. If a course is required in a curriculum or for graduation, as SPH110 is, why is it so required? Neither students nor instructors should accept as a reason "Because someone higher up said it should be." How, specifically, does this course relate to other courses, in and out of the curriculum or discipline? How is the course valuable to the student-whether or not he continues with his college education? And most importantly, the answers that the individual faculty member finds for these basic questions must be told to the students. As I say when discussing how to add speaker credentials to a speech, "The audience must understand how you relate to your topic, your attitude towards it, your reason for making a speech about it, and how much you care about it."

Specific Assessments.

Recently, I have re-evaluated the two written tests I give in speech in terms of their effectiveness. I have always used objective written tests, believing that the speeches students give in class are equivalent to written essay test questions. As I explain at the beginning of each semester, the student's primary grade is for the delivery of the public speech; however, there are certain rhetorical and communication principles that I want the student to have well in mind, as well. This knowledge is assessed on tests, which are written in such a way as to present examples for identification, matching, sequencing, etc. For instance, the questions about methods of definition, transitional sentences, and organizing principles are based on a selection that is from a speech about speechmaking, so that reading the example carefully will provide the answers. As one student has said, "If you read the examples carefully, you could find out the answers to the questions." Nevertheless, in all my years at SCI, only one student has ever received a perfect score on my mid-term test.

To re-evaluate the mid-term speech test, I counted how many misses were made for each question and calculated what percentage of the class missed each question. [1] I discovered that four out of the 63 questions were missed by a significant number of students.

• One question on the identification of one part of the standard communications module, specifically the medium: 82% missed it.
• A question on identifying one of the five classic introductions, specifically the introduction paradoxical: 88% missed it.
• A question on identifying a transitional sentence: 71% missed it.
• A question on identifying a type of example-the long, detailed illustration: 82% missed it.

IMMEDIATE COMPENSATION. Since so many had missed the questions, I rectified the situation immediately by reducing the total number of test questions by 4 and subtracting the specific missed questions from the total that each student missed. Re-calculating the percentages for each student resulted in a raising of all but one student's test grade. [2] Because I had already calculated the test grade for each student on his answer sheet, I crossed out the original calculation and grade and wrote the re-calculated score and grade in ink of a different color. I explained to the class, as we went through the test later, question by question, that the adjustments to the grades were a result of my assessment of the test. I think it important for students to know that instructors not only ask questions, they question the questions.

"Bad" questions should be deleted, but true assessment must follow their discovery. There are three causes for so many students missing test questions:

1. A fault of the teaching (both lectures and reading assignments) for not making those specific concepts clear,
2. A fault of the testmaker in the wording or construction of the questions,
3. A fault of the student for not having learned the answer to the questions.

I suspect that some of the questions may have been missed for one reason or another and one may have been missed for all three, etc. Immediately rectifying the situation is easy enough (with a good calculator at hand.) More difficult is adjusting or modifying the test or lectures or reading assignments so that "bad" questions become reasonably "good." I suspect, for instance, that so many missed identifying the example of the introduction paradoxical because there were five questions on the five classical introductions, but two of them were examples of paradoxical introductions while none was an example of the introduction inquisitive. I suppose it might be easy enough to add a question on the introduction inquisitive so that a tested student could see that five answers to five questions each have one of the five introductions as a correct response, instead of one of the five being used twice, but that promotes "playing the test" rather than knowing the answers. Additionally, I suspected that the missed question on illustration, the long, detailed example that depends for effect on vicarious involvement by the audience, was due to its very necessary references to the senses through detailed description. Because of this verbal imagery, some students identified the example as a fictive example, perhaps believing that anything that evokes mental images in a listener's mind cannot be real.

It is easy enough to throw out the questions and substitute others (or shorten the test without substitutions). That would be the equivalent of making permanent the immediate rectification I had used. The more difficult course of action is to alter lectures and reading assignments -- without "teaching to the test" -- so that fewer students miss the questions. Altering the test so that the answers become more obvious is also an easy solution, but that endangers the integrity of the course itself.

A more difficult course of action is to evaluate the questions by using the students, themselves. Since the final grade in the speech course depends primarily on the delivery of speeches, I coordinated the test questions with the students' speech grades to find out whether the better speaker missed the same test questions as the poorer one. If I found that none or one of the students who received "A's" on their speeches missed the four questions, then I could suppose that the questions were good discriminators. I found that none of the "A" speech students missed all four of the questions. [3] The one question that was missed by a few of the "A" speech students was the one on identifying illustration. This made me re-evaluate that question and change it.

Summarizing, I believe testing is still the primary way we assess a student's knowledge, but the kind of testing done should be appropriate to the course. Fundamentals of Speech tests are oral ones at a ratio of 5 to 2, but the two written tests do test what a student should remember about rhetoric, communication, language, and speaking. Since there is a close coordination between speaking well and writing well, I believe written objective, short-answer tests can be used in English composition classes effectively, especially if they are given the kind of scrutiny described here. And I think such tests will be able to measure what is important in the course and be an excellent way to quantify assessment.

Finally, I believe we must be open with our students about how we see the worth of our courses. The best part of this outside pressure to establish assessment techniques is that it makes each of us question the fundamentals of education, itself, and our discipline in particular. Why should students in the 21st century have to know rhetoric? Who cares about an audience when we rarely are part of one or need to be? And why should a student have to know how to pronounce "comparable"? Each of us has our own skull-cracking questions about the courses we teach. Answers need to be found for these basic-these fundamental- questions and those answers must be conveyed as eloquently as possible to our students. Otherwise, a college course becomes just another arbitrary hurdle that a student must jump over on his way to snatching the brass ring of a college degree that he hopes will land him a $45,000 entry level job.

If we who teach cannot understand the root importance of a curriculum, each course within that curriculum, and the simplest assignment in that course, then we have failed even those students that we have given "A's" to.

[1] Speech class sections are notorious for starting near their 20-student limit and diminishing to around 12-16 by mid-term. Therefore, one student becomes unduly significant percentage-wise, but such are the mathematical realities of our situation.

[2] That unfortunate missed other questions while getting the four most missed ones right. Her score was unchanged by the re-calculation, and her grade remained the same.

[3] One of them actually complained that since he had ansered all our the four questions correctly, my scoring adjustment was unfair because those questions were deleted from his test, too. I reminded him that his test grade, an "A," could not be any higher.

Occasional Papers on Assessment, Springfield College in Illinois
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