Today

• Find out your own beliefs about language learning and teaching • Start Chapter 1: • What is it to know a language?

• Standards used to determine language proficiency On Knowing a Language 1

Instructor’s role in Developing Good Language Learners (Reiss, 1983)

• Inform students honestly of the amount of work involved and the benefits • Create a comfortable classroom climate in which students feel comfortable and involved • Help students develop a cognitive style that is conductive to language learning • Personalize language instruction whenever possible in order to motivate students • Ask students to monitor each other to make them an active part of the language teaching • Present all material in a meaningful manner On Knowing a Language 2

The good language teacher

(Mollica and Nuessel, 1997) Out-of-class Roles

• Researcher • Planner • Manager • Advocate • Organizer • Evaluator • Communicator

In-class Roles

• Teacher • Motivator • Evaluator • Facilitator • Innovator • Communicator • Disciplinarian On Knowing a Language 3

The Good Language Learner

(Stern, 1975; Rubin, 1975)

• Has a personal learning style or uses positive learning strategies • Has an active approach to language learning • Has a strong drive to communicate and learn from communication. He is willing to do many things to get his message across • Practices • Attends to meaning • Attends to form and monitors her own speech and that of others On Knowing a Language 4

The Learner’s Role

(Cook, 1991)

• Find a learning style that suits you • Involve yourself in the language learning process • Develop an awareness of language both as system and communication • Pay consistent attention to expanding your language • Take into account the demands that L2 learning poses On Knowing a Language 5

Proficiency: a common goal

• Not a theory of language acquisition • Not a method of language teaching • Not a curricular outline or syllabus • Not a concern with grammar accuracy On Knowing a Language 6

Proficiency?

• Expertise • Competence • Ability • Polished Performance • High-level Skill • Well-developed Knowledge On Knowing a Language 7

On Knowing a Language

• Being proficient • For the medical doctor • For the businessman • For the tourist • For the linguist On Knowing a Language 8

Proficiency for the linguist

• Phonetics: knowledge of sounds in terms of production and perception • Phonology:knowledge of the sound system • Syntax: knowledge of the organization of words into larger structures, particularly sentences • Semantics: knowledge of the meanings of words and sentences • Pragmatics: knowledge of language use On Knowing a Language 9

Competence

(Chomsky, 1965)

vs. Performance

• Competence: what a person knows • we have the ability to distinguish between “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” expressions, as well as recognize ambiguity. We are capable of judging sentences we have never heard before!

• Performance: what a person can actually produce • we tend not to produce what is in our ‘competence’ because of memory limitations, distractions, errors, false starts, etc.

On Knowing a Language 10

Problems with the competence vs. performance distinction

• Limited to grammatical compentence • Does not include notions of • Appropriateness in the use of language, i.e. context • sociocultural significance On Knowing a Language 11

Communicative competence

• Concept coined by Hymes in the 60s who expressed the need to have a “sociolinguistic and contextual competence” as well as “grammatical competence” • 70s Campbell and Wales: grammatical vs. communicative competence On Knowing a Language 12

Communicative vs. grammatical competence: Criticisms

• Distinction forces the following assumptions: • Grammatical and communicative competence need to be developed separately • Grammatical competence is not an essential component of communicative competence • “ Communicative competence ability to function in a truly communicative setting-that is, in a dynamic exchange in which competence may be defined as the interlocutors” (Sauvignon 1972, p.8) linguistic must adapt itself to the total informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more On Knowing a Language 13

Communicative Competence: A framework (Canale and Swain, 1980 )

• grammatical competence: mastery of the linguistic code • sociolinguistic competence: ability to use language appropriately in different contexts and shift registers • discourse competence: ability to be cohesive and coherent • strategic competence: use of verbal and non verbal strategies to compensate for the gaps in knowledge On Knowing a Language 14

Summary

• Competence vs. Performance • Communicative vs. Grammatical competence • Communicative Competence On Knowing a Language 15

Assessing Proficiency: The past

• Need for a national standard • 50s

Common Yardstick

Testing Service (ETS) by Educational • 70s

Common Yardstick

by Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) • 80s

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

(ACTFL) On Knowing a Language 16

Assessing Proficiency:The present

ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines • Global tasks/functions: from naming objects to developing an argument • Context/content: from memorized utterances in a familiar context, to supporting your point of view in a political discussion • Accuracy: “fluency, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, pragmatic competence and sociolinguistic competence” • Text type: from words in isolation to extended discourse On Knowing a Language 17

Defining the content of instruction: Standards for foreign language learning

“Content standards, upon which performance standards are assessed, lie at the heart of education reforms” (Phillips, 1999 p1) The five Cs (1996): • Communication: Communicate in languages other than English • Cultures: Gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures • Connections: Connect with other disciplines and acquire information • Comparisons: Developing insight into the nature of language and culture • Communities: Participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world On Knowing a Language 18