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Did you take a language in high school or college that you didn’t already speak? Can you speak it now? Why or why not?
Did you take a language in high school or college that you didn’t already speak? Can you speak it now? Why or why not?
If the goal of taking a language class is to acquire functional ability in the language, everything done in the class should be in support of that.
It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But get this: Estimates are that up to 90% of what is done in language classes, especially at middle and high school levels, does not directly influence language acquisition.
How can we fix this? The evidence falls into several main categories: Language proficiency, input, interaction, output, and intercultural communicative competence.
Language proficiency
Language proficiency
Language proficiency refers to what tasks learners are able to accomplish in the language. As they improve, they’re able to understand and communicate more and more, on successively complex topics and with increasing accuracy as well.
Contrary to popular belief, increasing language proficiency isn’t only a matter of decreasing errors, nor is error reduction the primary goal of language learning. Read more...
Input
Input
Students need decodable language input, that is, reading and listening, at their level, on topics that interest them. Explanations of grammar rules and time spent correcting students don’t count!
Examples of input include stories, songs, games, and books (storybooks, not textbooks!) that are at the right level for learners of the language. Read more...
Interaction
Interaction
Language is social, and it must be acquired socially. Gone are the days when the purpose of language instruction was primarily to read literature in the second language. We now know that students need to be able to communicate with others, whether for career, academic, travel, family, or any other purposes. Read more...
Output
Output
Output is anything that learners produce in the language that they’re learning. Output should be focused on communicating meaning, not filling in blanks to apply grammatical rules.
Output takes the form of speaking or writing (or in the case of signed languages, signing). Read more...
Intercultural communicative competence
Intercultural communicative competence
The role of culture in the language class is for the learner to develop socially as a curious bilingual/multilingual, able to communicate with people from many cultures. While some knowledge about the target language speaking communities is very important to have, it’s not memorizing facts about countries. It’s understanding how the practices and products of communities connect with cultural perspectives. It’s how to detect cultural differences and figure out how to adjust communication accordingly. Read more...
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