Creating
Proficiency in Foreign Languages
By Jaime Cardoso
As
foreign language instructors, teachers confront dilemmas and questions such as
how to evaluate students’ proficiency in a foreign language? What level of
proficiency should students gain after one, two, three or four year of taking
classes to learn a foreign language? Is it even possible for students to become
proficient in a foreign language classroom environment? What plans of study and
educational materials are more effectives in teaching a foreign language?
Since
Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational generative grammar in the mid-1960s,
scholars have developed theories and methodologies that explain how people
learn their own language and the process for learning a second language.
Linguistics, psychologists and anthropologists, among others, discussed and
defined core concepts such as language proficiency and communicative,
linguistic, contextual and grammatical competence. In addition, they distinguished competence and performance and gave relevant importance to the
context and culture of people that use the target language. Gradually, they
moved toward
the definition of national standards to assess proficiency in
foreign languages. Quoting Scebold, Omaggio says that “by the late 70s, it was
becoming increasingly clear that the focus of curricular planning and testing
would need to shift from a micro-analysis of what was being taught to a
macro-analysis of what students could actually do with the language before any
real progress could be made” (10). Thus, in 1978 members of Congress with the
support of President Carter created a commission who elaborated recommendations
to address this issue. The commission proposed the creation of proficiency
tests and the evaluation of foreign language teaching in the country (Omaggio
10).
After years of research, discussions and assessments, the
efforts materialized in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages’ (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines to evaluate students’ proficiency in
a foreign language. Scholars understood language proficiency as a “whole range
of abilities that must be described in a graduated fashion in order to be
meaningful” (Omaggio 9). They established that proficiency needed to be defined
in terms of specific functions that students were able to do; for example, to
describe, to narrate or to argue. Then, they identified proficiency as a
concrete category that served to measures the level of competence in speaking,
listening, reading, and writing. The concept implied performing specific
functions in particular contexts, and it referred to precise contents, use of
language with accuracy, and the execution of basics, discrete or extended
discourses.
The
ACTFL scale incorporated a novice (low, mid and high) an intermediate (low, mid
and high), an advance (low, mid and high), and a superior level of proficiency.
For example, focus on speaking, in the novice low level students do not have
“real functional ability and, because of their pronunciation, may be unintelligible”.
In an intermediate low level, students develop “uncomplicated communicative
tasks” but they can survive in the target culture. In an advance low level,
students have the ability to participate in conversations, can narrate,
describe in different tenses, etc. (ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012).
The
standards also include five Goals Areas (Five Cs): Communication (students learn grammar structures and vocabulary to
interpersonal communication), Cultures (students
know and understand other cultures); Connections
(students makes connections with other disciplines), Comparisons (students 
compare their own language and culture with the
language and culture used by people speaking the target language), and Communities (students participates in the
community that uses the target language).
The
Spanish class at TPA follows the last version of ACTFL guidelines (released in
2012), and the State of Arizona standards for foreign languages. The standards
outline goals that facilitate students to become proficient in the target
language inside and beyond the classroom, and help them to understand the
culture of people who use the language they are learning.
Spanish
classes focus on developing students’ communicative competence. Having as a
background specific curriculum maps, plans of study, and syllabi, teacher and
students develop daily class activities (games, oral situations, discussions,
listening to music, etc.) with the purpose of developing students’ abilities
to
function in authentic communicative situations. Students gradually construct
linguistic accuracy and learn others important elements of communications such
as the use of gestures, intonation and facial expressions. Teacher evaluates
what students know about the target language (students’ linguistic competence)
through what they do with the language (students’ language performance). In
short, the primary goal is that
students reach communicative competence by developing their ability to
communicate in Spanish in real-life, and demonstrating their communicative
skills through task-based communicative activities.
According to ACTFL’s evaluation criteria and
research conducted by specialists, after four years of Spanish students will
perform at an intermediate low level of language proficiency (Moeller and
Theiler). Thus, after one year of Honors Spanish I: Grammar and Conversation, students will reach a novice
low level of Spanish. Later, in Honors Spanish II: Grammar and Conversation,
students will accomplish a novice mid level.
At
the end of three years of Spanish, Honors Spanish III: Intermediate Literature and Composition,
students will rank at a novice high level. They will “communicate and exchange
information about familiar topics” (NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements). One
characteristic of TPA foreign language students level III is that they will
have the instruments to discuss literature in the target language. They, for
example, will answer questions like:
What are the strategies for reading literature in a 
foreign language? How to
derive essential information from authentic materials? How to identify cognates
and false cognates? Furthermore, in the fourth years of Spanish, Honors Spanish IV: Advanced Literature and Composition, students
will reach an intermediate low level. They will apply the grammar structures and vocabulary they have learned
in previous years and will
answer these kinds of questions: How to read literature
in a foreign language? How to
derive essential information from authentic materials? How Miguel de Cervantes
created a character, Don Quixote, which shows universal human concerns such as
honor, virtue, truth, beauty, and goodness?
Thus, TPA is not only preparing proficient
students in foreign languages with the ability to communicate in interpersonal
settings, but also to talk about literature. It is also preparing students for
taking advanced foreign language courses in college. In other words, TPA
instructs students to be ready in an interconnected world, where language and
cultures are in constant exchange.
Moellern, Aleidine J. and Janine Theiler. “Spoken
Spanish Language Development at the High Scholl
Level: A Mixed-Methods Study”. Foreign
Language Annals. Ed. Anne Nerenz. Virginia:
ACTFL, 2014. 210-229.
Omaggio,
Hadley Alice. Teaching Language in
Context. Boston: Heinle &
Heinle, 2001.
