Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2011 - 20122

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    James E. Alatis: A Life in Language An Oral History
    (2012) Coomber, Nicole M.; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This oral history tells the story of James E. Alatis, who served as dean of the Georgetown School of Languages and Linguistics (SLL) and as the first executive director of the professional organization Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Born to Greek immigrants in Weirton, West Virginia in 1926, his preparation for leadership in language education included an upbringing as a child of immigrants and Greek community school. In this environment, Alatis learned to be an interpreter for his parents and for his community. In his later leadership of transformational organizations in the language education field, he institutionalized a style of leadership characterized by the ability to promote a vision and interpret the needs of various groups. His interpretive leadership style fostered collaboration towards a common vision. His story underscores the essential role of linguistics in language education, advocates for a close relationship between government and academia, and promotes applied linguistics as key for language learning and scholarship. He leads by facilitating collaboration and translating among different groups. His vision of language education proved prescient after over forty years in the field of language education and despite challenges presented to it by a change in leadership at TESOL and the closing of the SLL. Alatis's story both opens a window to this period of history in language education and stands as an example of academic leadership in the field.
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    ITEM-ANALYSIS METHODS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ILTA GUIDELINES FOR PRACTICE: A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF CLASSICAL TEST THEORY AND ITEM RESPONSE THEORY MODELS ON THE OUTCOME OF A HIGH-STAKES ENTRANCE EXAM
    (2011) Ellis, David P.; Ross, Steven J; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The current version of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) Guidelines for Practice requires language testers to pretest items before including them on an exam, or when pretesting is not possible, to conduct post-hoc item analysis to ensure any malfunctioning items are excluded from scoring. However, the guidelines are devoid of guidance with respect to which item-analysis method is appropriate for any given examination. The purpose of this study is to determine what influence choice of item-analysis method has on the outcome of a high-stakes university entrance exam. Two types of classical-test-theory (CTT) item analysis and three item-response-theory (IRT) models were applied to responses generated from a single administration of a 70-item dichotomously scored multiple-choice test of English proficiency, administered to 2,320 examinees applying to a prestigious private university in western Japan. Results illustrate that choice of item-analysis method greatly influences the ordinal ranking of examinees. The implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are made for revising the ILTA Guidelines for Practice to delineate more explicitly how language testers should apply item analysis in their testing practice.