As stipulated in the curriculum for the Master's Degree in the Teaching of English as a Second Language, each MATESL student not completing a Master’s Thesis must pass a comprehensive examination over the required courses of the curriculum.

Eligibility 

A) The standard time to take the comprehensive exam for any course is after that course has been fully completed. It is highly recommended that the comp exam for a course be completed no later than the semester after course completion. The actual ‘no earlier than’ date when an exam may be taken shall be determined by the professor giving that exam.

B)  In the case of graduating students, exams must be finished no later than 3 weeks before the last day of classes in their final term in order to give the professor sufficient time to grade the exam and put the results in the student record.

C)  A faculty member who is the writer/reader of a comprehensive examination question for a course area may permit students to take that course exam during the same semester in which students are enrolled in the course. Instructors should state in their course syllabi whether or not such permission is granted.

The Comprehensive Exam required for graduation consists of 7 take-home sub-exams (one for each of the courses mentioned below) with each consisting of questions that examinees will answer in the form of a Word document using whatever resources the examinees wish. The exam response should follow any specifications described by the professor responsible for the exam.

Content of the Examination

A) The 7 sub-exam will cover the following seven areas of required course work in the MATESL curriculum:

• Theoretical Foundations of Second Language Acquisition
• Language Learning and Technology
•  Phonology and Morphology for ESL Teachers
• Pedagogical Grammar 2  
• Language and Social Interaction/Sociolinguistics
• Principles of Language Testing
• Second Language Reading and Writing

B)  All exams require a knowledge of the substantive content found in current MATESL courses, but should be limited to the reading list and materials covered in each course.

Duties of the Examination Coordinator

The Director of the MATESL Graduate Program shall serve as the Examination Coordinator.

The Examination Coordinator shall have the following responsibilities:

• a. to maintain the accuracy of information about the comprehensive examination on the Departmental website;
• b. to remind professors teaching the required courses that they should announce in class and document in their syllabus their policy for their Comprehensive subexam. This should include when students should take the exam, and the latest date by which it should be turned in; and
• c. to maintain a tracking system where faculty record examination results.

Examination Dates

Examinations are normally offered only during the Fall and Spring semesters, with Summer exams being offered at the discretion of individual professors

Exam responses shall be due no later than three weeks before the last day of classes. An earlier deadline may be set by the writer/reader of a question.

Exam Writers and Graders

Exams for a course should be written and evaluated by the professor with whom the student took the course in question.

If the professor is on leave during a particular semester and does not wish to grade Comps during that time (students should check with the professor first) that professor should leave a copy of their sub-exam with the Director of the MATESL program and designate another professor to grade the exam.

Examination Procedures

The amount of time given to students to answer an individual comprehensive exam shall be a minimum of 1 week, with longer exam periods being at the discretion of the professor.

Exams should be returned by the student via an attached document in an email to the professor who gave it unless another arrangement is required by the professor.

Grade Options

Each sub-exam writer is responsible to grade the answers to her or his sub-exam questions promptly upon receipt.

The grades that can be assigned to an answer of a regular sub-exam are the following:

Graders giving a grade of REVISE or FAIL must explain in writing why an answer received the grade of REVISE or FAIL. Their comments shall be in a single, composite statement.

In the case of a REVISE grade, examinees are expected to revise their existing exam answer in order to address the weaknesses identified by the examiner.

In the case of a FAIL grade, examinees will be given an entirely new set of exam questions and will only have one opportunity to receive a new grade of PASS.

Once the grade is awarded, any attempt on the part of a candidate to influence a grader to change a grade is regarded as inappropriate.

Students given a grade of REVISE or FAIL on an individual exam may do so in consultation with the professor giving the exam. This may be done at any time before the five-year limit of degree coursework expires, but should always be done as soon as possible.

A student is not obliged to be registered at UIUC in order to take a sub-exam or complete a retake based on a REVISE or FAIL result.

Reporting Grade Results

Deadlines

a. Sub-exams must be graded and grades recorded on students’ Tracking Sheets in SLCL Box folders no later than Friday of Week 13.

b. Professors shall submit exam results (and any overall feedback in the case of a grade of REVISE or FAIL) directly to students. The deadline for this distribution shall be no later than Monday of Week 14.

c. For a REVISE examination, the exam results should be submitted to students and to the Graduate Services office no later than Monday of Week 15. REVISE answers must also be returned to the Graduate Service office at this time.

Tracking

Tracking Sheets for all members of the student body who have not elected the thesis option will be in a secure online storage file for easy access by faculty members. These sheets are not available to the students.

It is the responsibility of each writer/grader to record promptly on the examinee’s Tracking Sheet each grade given and to certify the grade with a signature. This also applies to grades awarded for immediate retake examinations and for reexaminations to remedy a grade of FAIL.

Grading the Examination as a Whole

In order to reach an overall evaluation of the Comprehensive Examination, each sub-examination will be evaluated. The overall evaluation results include the following: