OK I can just imagine what Diana would say here because she already knows all this edu-babble but I don’t. So I am using stream-of-consciousness writing here to try to figure it all out because all the standards-babble has confused me for a long long time.
But it’s good if we figure it out for ourselves because then it is better understood and the learning is deeper. Hey, it’s a main reason I have this blog, to figure things out and share ideas with others who may be facing the same dilemmas in foreign language education as it morphs now quickly into something new and exciting.
The last three posts describing my reflections on the standards arrived at some resolution in the third post, but here I think I can lay this thing to rest, having learned something that I can really use when reporting grades using SBGR in my current school where that is required (no grades, just meeting, approaching, etc. plus describing four learning habits which I won’t go into here).
So check this out. I actually went to the ACTFL website and saw this, something I had never bothered to seriously look at in my entire career (I know I’m not alone on this so I’m not going to mea culpa myself too bad on it) –
STANDARDS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING
COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH
- Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
- Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
- Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
CULTURES
GAIN KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER CULTURES
- Standard 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied
- Standard 2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied
CONNECTIONS
CONNECT WITH OTHER DISCIPLINES AND ACQUIRE INFORMATION
- Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language
- Standard 3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures
COMPARISONS
DEVELOP INSIGHT INTO THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
- Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own
- Standard 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
COMMUNITIES
PARTICIPATE IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITIES AT HOME & AROUND THE WORLD
- Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting
- Standard 5.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment.
– See more at: http://www.actfl.org/node/192#sthash.PhVkIGcL.dpuf
Now this is good. Those are the real standards. (How embarrassing – I have a website dedicated to improving language teaching and I never gave any serious consideration to the above ACTFL page before – hey I can deal with it and forgive myself, if I even need to, because I don’t think ACTFL is providing us with good practical leadership that we can use to infuse our teaching with good things in our classrooms anyway. They have over-intellectualized what is really an acoustical process, to paraphrase Berty Segal.)
Now we can see how simple this whole thing is. I will just forget the other four unimportant C’s totally*. They can fire me if they like for not addressing them in my classroom instruction, and it would be just fine because there is no way I am teaching to that junk with the amount of instructional minutes available to me and my knowledge of how much time it takes to learn a language.
Therefore, since I totally address the Communication standard in all I do, all I have to do is pull from the above and forget all those little detailed thingies with the three numbers in them. Thus, drum roll please, I will officially now teach to the standards in red – they the real standards for those who use comprehensible input in their classrooms:
COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH
- Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions (this one covers the story creation process with our kids, PQA, etc. – anything we do in class to just talk to the kids)
- Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics (this one covers story quizzes and translation quizzes on the story)
- Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.(this one covers free writes and the little drawings they do after a story and their creations in Notability)
Now, if someone wants me to use those other little three numbered thingies I will just use those few that actually describe what I do relative to the ones in red above. I can handle two numbered thingies but not three numbered thingies. – the sub-standards as in below standards and there is truth in language right there.
If not, fire me. I can only pay so much attention to what those ACTFL honchos sitting around all day in their ivory towers come up with when they are – in my opinion – really very much out of touch with what is really going on in our nation’s classrooms.
*for those new here we have laid the culture discussion pretty much to rest here:
https://benslavic.com/blog/category/culture/