CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
A. DEFINING
PROFICIENCY LEVELS
The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986) have come to
be a widely recognized proficiency standard in language teaching circles. The
current version of the guidelines is historically related to what or many years
was referred to as “FSI” referred to as “ILR” (Interagency Language Roundtable)
levels in more formal research settings, represent points on an increasing
scale of sophistication as determined by the FSI Oral Interview.
B. TEACHING
BEGINNING LEVELS
Teaching beginner is considered by many to
be the most challenging level of language instruction. Since students at this
level have little or no prior knowledge of the target language, the teacher (and
accompanying techniques and materials) becomes a central determiner in whether
students accomplish their goals. This can also be most tangibly rewarding level
for a teacher because the growth of students proficiency is apparent in a
matter of a few weeks.
At the beginning or even false-beginning
level, your students have very little language “behind: them. You may therefore
be temped to go along with the popular misconception that the target language
cannot be taught directly, that you will have to resort to a good deal of
talking “about” the second language in the students’ native language. Such is
clearly not the case, as beginning language courses have demonstrated for many
decades. But you do have to keep in mind that your students’ capacity for taking
in and retaining new words, structures, and concepts is limited.
The following ten factors – and the words
of advice accompanying each- will help you to formulate an approach to teaching
beginners. As you adopt a theoretical stance on each factors, you will be able
to design classroom techniques that are consistent with your approach.
1.
Students’ cognitive learning processes
In those first few days
and even weeks of language learning, virtual all of the students processing
with respect to the second language it self is in a focal, controlled mode.
Therefore, you can expect to engage in plenty of repetition of a limited number
of words, phrases, and sentences. Don’t become frustrated if a considerable
period of time goes by with little change in these learning modes.
The forms themselves,
although still controlled (limited in capacity) nevertheless move into a
peripheral mode as students become immersed in the task of seeking genuine
information.
2.
The role of the Teacher
Beginning students are
highly dependent on the teacher for models of language and so a
teacher-centered or teacher-fronted classroom is appropriate for some of your
classroom time. Student are able to initiate few question and comments, so it
is your responsibility to “keep the ball rolling”. Still, your beginning level
classes need not be devoid of a modicum of student-centered work. Pair work and
group work are effective techniques for taking students’ focus off you as the
center of attention and for getting them into an interactive frame of mind even
the most beginning level.
As students pain in their
proficiency, they will be able to initiate questions and comments of their own
that may then occasionally shift the locus of control.
3.
Teacher Talk
Your input in the class
is crucial. Every ear and eye are indeed focused on you. Your own English needs
to be clearly articulated. It is appropriate to slow your speech somewhat for
easier student comprehension, but don’t slow it so much that it loses its
naturalness. And remember, you don’t need to talk any louder to beginners than
to advanced students if your articulation is clear. Use simple vocabulary and
structures that are at or just slightly beyond their level.
4.
Authenticity of Language
The language that you
expose your students to should, according to principles of CLT, be authentic
language, not just because students are beginners. Simple greeting and
introduction, for example are authentic and yet manageable/ make sure utterance
are limited to short, simple phrases. At time such language may appear to be
artificial because of all the repetition needed at this stage. Don’t despair,
your students will appreciate the opportunity to practice their new language.
5.
Fluency and accuracy
Fluency is a goal at this
level but only within limited utterance lengths. Fluency does not have to apply
only to long utterance. The “flow” of language is important to establish, from
the beginning, in reasonably short segments. Attention to accuracy should
center on the particular grammatical, phonological, or discourse element that
are being practiced.
6.
Students creativity
The ultimate goals of
learning a language is to be able to comprehend and produce it in unrehearsed situations, which demand
both receptive and productive creativity. But at the beginning level, student
can be creative only within the confines of a highly controlled repertoire of
language. Innovation will come later when students get more language under
their control.
7.
Techniques
Short, simple techniques
must be used. Some mechanical techniques are appropriate-choral repetition and
other drilling, for example. A good many teacher-initiated questions dominate
at this level, followed only after some time by an increase in simple
student-initiated questions. Group and pair activities are excellent techniques
as long as they are structured and clearly defined with specific objectives. A
variety of techniques is important because of limited language capacity.
8.
Listening and Speaking Goals
Listening and speaking
functions for beginner are meaningful and authentic communication tasks. They
are limited more by grammar, vocabulary, and length of utterance than by
communicative functions. It is surprising how many language functions can be
achieved with very uncomplicated language.
9.
Reading and Writing Goals
In level 1 reading and
writing topics are confined to brief but nevertheless real-life written
material. Advertisement, forms, and recipes are grist for the beginner’s
reading mill, while written work may involve forms, lists, and simple notes and
letters. The most important contextual factor that you should bear in mind in
teaching reading and writing to beginners in their own native language.
10.
Grammar
As the charts show, a typical beginning
level will deal at the outset with very simple verb forms, personal pronouns,
definite and indefinite articles, singular and plural nouns, and simple
sentences, in a progression of grammatical topics from simple to complex.
C. TEACHING
INTERMEDIATE LEVELS
In intermediate levels students have progressed beyond
notice stages to an ability to sustain basic communicative tasks, to establish
some minimal fluency, to deal with a few unrehearsed situations, to
self-correct on occasion, top use a few compensatory strategies, and generally
to “get along” in the language beyond mere survival. The picture change
somewhat. Your role and the students’ capacities change. Consider the same ten
factors :
1.
Students’ cognitive learning processes
As the intermediate stage
some automatic processing has taken hold. Phrases, sentences, structures, and
conversational rules have been practiced and are increasing in number, forcing
the mental processes to automatize. I like to think of automaticity as placing
elements of language into the “hard drive” are too small to contain all the
information we neerd. One of your principal goals at this level is to get
students to continue automatize, to continue to allow the bits and pieces of
language that might clutter the mind to be relegated to automaticity.
2.
The role of the Teacher
Your are no longer the
only initiator of language. Students should be encouraged to ask questions,
make comments, and negotiate certain options in learning where appropriate.
More students-student interaction can now take place in pairs, small groups,
and whole-class activity.
Learner-centered work is
now possible for more sustained lengths of time as students are able to
maintain topics of discussion and focus. By its very nature, the intermediate
level is richly diverse, that diversity can work to your advantage with
carefully designed cooperative activities that capitalize in difference among
students. Don’t set equal expectations for all students, however, since
abilities, especially, speaking ability, can vary widely.
3.
Teacher Talk
Most of your oral
production can be sustained at a natural pace, as long as your articulation is
clear. Teacher talk should not occupy the major proportion of a class hour,
otherwise, you are probably not giving students enough opportunity to talk. You
should be using less of the native language of the learners at this level, but
some situations may still demand it.
4.
Authenticity of Language
At this level students
sometimes become overly concerned about grammatical correctness and may want to
wander into esoteric discussions of grammatical details. This penchant for
analysis might get them too far afield from authentic, real language. Make sure
they stay on the track.
5.
Fluency and accuracy
The dichotomy between
fluency and accuracy is a crucial concern here, more so than at either of the
other ends of the proficiency spectrum. Some students are likely to become
overly concerned about accuracy, possibly berating themselves for the mistakes
they make and demanding constant corrections for very slip-up.
In general, fluency
exercises are a must at this level. They help to get students over the hump of
always having to say or write everything absolutely correctly. A big part of
your task with the most students is to maintain their flow with just enough
attentions to error to keep them growing.
6.
Students creativity
The fact that some of
this new language is now under control gives rise to more opportunities for the
student to be creative. Try to recognize this form of creativity as a positive
sign of language development and of the internalization of a coherent system.
Students are also becoming more capable of applying their classroom language to
unrehearsed situations.
7.
Techniques
Because of the increasing
language capacities of your students, techniques can increase in complexity.
Common interactive techniques for intermediate include chain stories, surveys
and polls, paired interviews, group problem solving, role-plays, story telling
and many others.
8.
Listening and Speaking Goals
The linguistic complexity
of communicative listening-speaking goals increase steadily. Along with the
creation of novel utterance, students can participate in short conversation,
ask and answer questions, find alternative ways to convey meaning, solicit
information from others, and more. The functions themselves may not be
intrinsically more complex, but the forms they use are.
9.
Reading and Writing Goals
Increasing complexity in
terms of length, grammar, and discourse now characterizes reading material as
student read paragraphs and short, simple stories, and are beginning to use
skimming and scanning skills. Writing is similarly more sophisticated.
10.
Grammar
Grammar topics such as
progressive verb tenses and clauses typify intermediate level teaching.
Students can benefit from small doses of short, simple explain nation of points
in English. Keep grammatical meta-language to an ideal minimum at this level:
otherwise, your students will become English grammarians instead of English
speakers. Remember, you are interested in grammar because that is where some of
your training has been , but you don’t need to make budding Ph.D.s in linguistics
of your students.
D. TEACHING
ADVANCED LEVELS
As students move up the developments ladder, getting
closer and closer to their goals, developing fluency along with a greater
degree of accuracy able to handle virtually any situations in which target
language use is demanded, they become “advanced students”.
1.
Students’ cognitive learning processes
As competence in language
continues to build, students can realize the full spectrum of processing,
assigning larger and larger chunks to automatic modes and gaining the
confidence to put the formal structures of language on the periphery so that
focal attention may be given to the interpretation and negotiation of meaning
and to the conveying of thoughts and feeling in interactive communication.
2.
The role of the Teacher
On the surface, your job
may appear easier with advanced students, you can sit back and let their
questions and self-generated curiously take over. In reality, the independence
that’s students have acquired mist be cleverly channeled into class-room
routines that benefit most of the students most of the time. No mean task! The
most common occurrence in advanced level teaching is that your class runs away
with it self and you are left with only a quarter of half your plans fulfilled.
So, whole you want to take advantage of the self-starting personalities in your
class, orderly plans are still important. A directive role on your part can
create effective learning opportunities even within a predominantly
learner-centered classroom.
3.
Teacher Talk
Natural language at
natural speed is a must at this level. Make sure your students are challenged
by your choice of vocabulary, structures, idioms, and other language features.
But, after all, they are still learning the language, so remember that they
have not yet turned into native speakers. The amount of teacher talk should be
commensurate with the type of activity. Make sure your students have ample
opportunities to produce language so that your role as a provider of feedback
takes prominences. For some of your students, this is the last chance to
benefit from informed, systematic feedback on their performance; from here on
out, they will be “out there” where people, out of politeness or respect,
rarely give corrections.
4.
Authenticity of Language
Everything from academic
prose to literature to idiomatic conversation becomes a legitimate resource for
the classroom. Virtually no authentic language material should be summarily
disqualified at this stage. Certain restrictions may come to bear, depending on
how advanced your class is, of course.
5.
Fluency and accuracy
At this level most, if
not all of your students are “fluent” in that they have passed beyond the
breakthrough stage and are no longer thinking about every word or structure
they are producing or comprehending. A handful or two of problems still need
attention. If errors are relatively rare, an occasional treatment from you or
from peers may be quite helpful.
6.
Students creativity
The joy of teaching at
this level is in those moments of student performance when you know that they
are now able to apply classroom material to real contexts beyond. Make sure
that students keep their eyes fixed in those goals. Be ever wary of classroom
activity that simply ends right there in the classroom.
7.
Techniques
Techniques can now tap
into a full range of sociolinguistics and pragmatic competences. Typical of
this level are activities like group debates and argumentations, complex
role-plays, scanning and skimming reading material, determining and questioning
author’s intent and writing essays and critiques. Often at this level students
have specific purposes for which they are planning to use English. Focus on
those purpose as much as possible.
8.
Listening and Speaking Goals
At this level students
can focus more carefully on all the sociolinguistic nuances of language.
Pragmatic constrain are common areas needing work as students finc-tune their
production and comprehension in terms of register, style, the status of the
interlocutor, the specific context of a conversational exchange turn-taking,
topic nomination and termination, topic-changing, and culturally conditioned
language constrains,.
9.
Reading and Writing Goals
Reading and writing
skills similarly progress closer and closer to native-speaker competence as
students learn more about such things as critical reading, the role of schemata
in interpreting written texts, and writing a document related to one’s
profession.
10.
Grammar
Your classes need not become saturated
with language about language, but
will-targeted deductive grammar has its place. You have now had a chance to
contemplate quite a number of variables that changes as you teach lower or
higher levels of proficiency. The age and proficiency variables are two
extremely important issues to incorporate into any attempt to plan and conduct
language lessons.
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