I'm willing to bet that a lot of us have had a conversation that goes like this:
Person: What do you do for work? You: I'm a high school Spanish teacher Person: Good for you! I took 4 years of high school Spanish and I can't speak it at all Sound familiar? It's been shown that 10% of Americans speak a second language, 20% of students are enrolled in a language class in grades k-12 and only 8% of college students are studying a second language (source ACTFL). Isn't it time we change the narrative? Isn't it time we change those numbers? We want our students to be global citizens and yet only 10% of us can speak a second language. This is where proficiency comes in. The American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) coined the term "proficiency" and defined it as "the ability to use language in real world situations in a spontaneous interaction and non-rehearsed context and in a manner acceptable and appropriate to native speakers of the language.” (ACTFL Performance Descriptors). In layman's terms, teaching for proficiency is teaching out students how to USE the language in with real people in real situations and less about what they KNOW about the language. So how do I get started? This page on my blog will go through a bunch of resources for proficiency-based teaching that I recommend reading. Here are my ideas to get you started! *Note these are not meant to be step by step directions but instead more of a fluid process* Idea #1: Read the ACTFL World Readiness Standards- Think of these as your new state standards. These are 11 guidelines that help guide us to thinking about how we plan courses, units and lessons. They integrate what are called the 5 C's which are Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. These are the overall guiding ideas that change how we approach teaching. So a unit transformation looks like this: Before: Students will be able to use the present tense. Students will be able to use vocabulary related to hobbies Now: I can explain what I do in my free time and compare/contrast that to what teenagers in Colombia do in their free time. The unit goes from being grammar/vocab driven to culturally driven. Students communicate about a topic using the grammar/vocab, they compare/contrast cultures, they compare teenage life in Colombia to life in their culture, they connect to other disciplines like art, music, and physical education and they have the chance to communicate with teenagers in the target culture. Idea #2: Read through the ACTFL Can Do Statements- I'll admit these took me a while to fully grasp. The basic idea is that every student is somewhere on what we call the "Path to Proficiency". Based on the number of contact hours your students have with the language you can have a sense of where they are and more importantly where you are targeting your instruction. Greg Duncan does the math that about 135-155 hours of instruction (theoretically) moves you to the next level. These Can Do Statements give you an idea of what your students CAN DO in terms of reading/listening, speaking and writing. They break them down into novice, intermediate, advanced, superior and distinguished. In our classroom reality, we are looking at novices and intermediates. They then break them down into sub levels of low, mid, high. So for example a novice mid can produce short phrases and memorized language when speaking/writing while an intermediate mid can produce connected sentences to begin to explain their ideas. There's a lot more depth to these Can Do Statements but at a glance they give you a great place to start as you think about where your students are and more importantly where they're going. Idea #3: Read through the ACTFL Core Practices- These are what I consider my guiding principles of proficiency oriented teaching. These 6 guidelines help me focus my instruction. They include: Using 90% target language in class, Planning with Backwards Design, Providing Effective Feedback, Using Authentic Resources, Planning Interpersonal Tasks and Teaching Grammar as a Concept and in Context. My future blog posts explain these in more detail. Idea #4: Look at a unit you are teaching in the future- Take a look at a unit you have coming up and just try some new techniques in it. Think of how you're presenting culture and see if you can weave it in throughout the unit so it's not presented at the end as a "by the way". Are you looking to see how much your students know about the language or what they can do with the language? Plan times for them to be creative with the language and produce more. Start small with this. Taking on proficiency is a big task so it's important to try smaller chunks before taking on a huge project Idea #5: Try using an authentic resource in your classroom and see how it goes- Take a look online or on Pinterest and type in a topic/theme you're working on and see what shows up. There are articles, videos, infographics, commercials, Tweets, advertisements and more all waiting for you to bring them into your classroom. Find some that are related and ones you think your students can work with. Incorporate them into your unit by asking students some questions such as main idea, word detection, have them infer answers to questions, react personally, compare cultures and more. They don't have to know every word in the article, they just have to be able to do a task at their proficiency level (see the Can Do Statements for ideas) Idea #6: Challenge your students and yourself to speak the target language for a full class period, a full week, a full month- Tell your students at the beginning of the class that you want to challenge them to speak the target language for the whole period. Offer a reward to them if they do it (but don't punish them if they don't). If they can do a class, try it again. Then try it for a week. And it's not just them speaking the language...YOU are too. It becomes a really fun game where you're trying to get your ideas across all in the language with little to no English. Idea #7: Instead of giving a test, try a performance assessment- Take a look at that end of unit assessment you're giving. Does it tell you what students know or what they can do? If it's what they know, think about how you could change it. Is there a way you could make it a conversation between two-four people instead? Is there a way to make it a writing prompt instead? For example: Before: A test including multiple choice vocab questions on environment vocabulary and fill in the blank subjunctive verbs. Now: You will have a mini-debate in a group of 3-4 to discuss your opinion as to whether your community should eliminate plastic water bottles, plastic straws and plastic bags. In your conversation make sure you express your opinion and back it up using what you learned about the topic. Now we're seeing how students can handle a conversation on a relevant topic and the grammar and vocabulary that I would have been testing before is woven in so they have to use it to complete the task. These are some starting ideas. Read more of the posts for more ideas and resources!
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