Employers Give Advice to Colleges

Here's another article of interest to piggyback on Ken's recommended report. This time, though, it is about new college graduates and employers' assessment of them.

"How Should Colleges Assess And Improve Student Learning?" is a nine-page analysis of a survey on more than 300 US employers conducted late last year on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Two pieces of advice from these employers interest me tremendously:

• Multiple-choice tests are seen as ineffective.
• Writing is one of the areas of learning most in need of improvement.

As a language teacher, I've always believed that one's writing ability is the litmus test to determine whether one has truly mastered a modern language.

In our ESL context, it is writing that holds most of our students back, as we see them drop out due to failure in writing, or worse, they pass classes without being able to write well at their level. What can we do about this in order to better educate our student population?