How useful is the SOLO taxonomy?

The major function of the SOLO taxonomy is that it serves as a common platform for staff members of the same department to conduct assessment across a large number of subjects and across a great variety of assessment tasks. Most staff members being interviewed shared this positive view about the move towards a set of more explicit and articulate assessment criteria which are theoretically sound and widely applicable.

The SOLO taxonomy has been shown to be applicable to a number of disciplines (Boulton-Lewis, 1994; Campbell et al., 1998; Chick, 1998; Burnett, 1999; Lake, 1999; Chan et al., 2002). The present study adds to that list by demonstrating SOLO's suitability to a number of linguistics subjects. The subjects to which the SOLO taxonomy has been applied by staff members of the English Department are mainly linguistics and linguistics related subjects. They range from introduction to basic knowledge about language such as "Introduction to Language Study" and "Lexical Studies" to applied linguistic knowledge such as "Second Language Learning" and "Analyzing Professional Discourse". These subjects constitute almost half of all the subjects offered by the English Department. They are categorized as "content" subjects. The rest of the subjects are classified as "language proficiency" subjects.

When the department first decided to adopt the SOLO taxonomy as the departmental assessment criteria, the general consensus was that the taxonomy might not be suitable for the "proficiency" subjects because the objectives emphasize "skills" rather than "knowledge". A set of "benchmark" criteria would be more appropriate for the language proficiency subjects.

As a result of such a dichotomy in the categorization of subjects, two sets of criteria were used, the SOLO taxonomy for the content subjects and a set of band descriptors for the proficiency subjects. However, most staff members agree that the situation is far from ideal, especially when the categorization of some subjects seems arbitrary (for example, the subject "English for the Mass Media").

Two issues emerge from this problem. First, since both the SOLO taxonomy and the band descriptors are criterion-referenced in nature, why can the two not be merged into one? In theory, if the assessment criteria are aligned with the learning outcomes, whether they are content-based or skill-based should not become an obstacle in the application of the SOLO taxonomy. Examples of how the SOLO taxonomy can be used in English proficiency are provided in Biggs and Collis (1982, pp.95-122). There is no reason why the criteria of SOLO cannot be adapted to suit the needs of proficiency subjects. The other issue raised by staff members is the fact that the division between "content" and "proficiency" is sometimes purely artificial. In fact, once the criterion-referenced approach is adopted, assessment becomes more holistic in nature. Accordingly, the seemingly obvious distinction between "content" versus "proficiency" becomes blurred.

To conclude, the SOLO taxonomy is very useful for the content subjects. However, the department should explore ways to merge the two sets of criteria to form one coherent set of criteria geared towards the outcome-oriented curriculum.

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