As a language teacher, I believe in the equity of all languages and cultures. At the same time, it is critical to "put the target language first" when attempting to learn it. There are many paths toward building language proficiency. However, I believe that when the theory behind proficiency-oriented approaches to education today is applied in practical ways, learner success is maximized.

 

Referencing these theoretical underpinnings, I maintain the following view toward language teaching and learning:

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View of Language

Language is:

• A means of interaction and communication

• A way for students to meet their personal, community, and educational needs

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View of Language Learning

Language learning happens best through:

• Engaging in real-world communication and authentic tasks

• Having exposure to constant, simplified, and meaningful authentic language (comprehensible input) over time

• Being comfortable and anxiety-free (low affective filter) in order to take risks with language

• Negotiating meaning and interacting

• Engaging with personally-relevant authentic materials

• Recognizing  and applying corrective feedback to output

• Practicing learned content and skills, as stated through defined learning outcomes and proficiency benchmarks relevant to a learner's needs

• Not solely a cognitive process, but one of culture, communication, and social interactivity

• The application of not only a language's individual parts to perform a task, but...

• Employing expert, credentialed world language teachers

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View of Objectives

Objectives are:

• Determined by using needs analyses to identify student and perceived needs

• Defined as measurable outcomes of the course or program

• Written as competences consisting of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors required for successful performance of a real-world task or activity in general and/or academic settings

• Needed to operationalize the ideas of communicative competency

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View of Syllabus

The syllabus is:

• Structural, notional, functional, notional-functional, topic-based, or skills-based

• Essential skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors required for effective performance of a real world task or activity in "any domain of life" but usually world or social survival

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View of Instructional Strategies

Instructional strategies:

• Widely vary, as long as they are meaningful interchanges in the target language that enhance communicative competency

• Focus on the skills necessary in real-world situations

• Support receptive and productive skills as well as fluency versus accuracy

• Are student-centered and relevant to the learner

• Respond to various learner types

• Integrate culture

• Teach grammar inductively

• Place the learner in an active role 

• Encourage critical thinking and problem solving

• Integrate the four language skills

• Include role-plays, information gap (i.e. sharing or gathering of missing information), task completions, or opinion sharing

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View of Learner's Role

The learner:

• Is actively engaged in the learning process 

• Interacts with peers, not only the teacher

• Is dependent upon individual efforts as well as social interaction

• Is responsible for their own learning and progress

• Develops language learning strategies

• Possesses a willingness to experiment and take risk with language

• Has a drive to communicate

• Looks for patterns in language

• Attends to meaning as well as grammar

• Transfers knowledge and skills to new situations

• Actively seeks out opportunities to interact with others in the target language

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View of Teacher's Role

The teacher:

• Recognizing that all learners have the ability to meet - and even exceed - with language learning

• Is primarily the architect, facilitator, and monitor of meaningful interactions that promote communicative competence

• Is the materials developer, locator of resources - technology included - assessor, coach, guide, the “lecturer”, when needed, the needs analyst, and the advisor

• Is responsible for opportunities for learners to engage with each other as well as course materials

• Is tasked with providing students individualized corrective feedback

• Needs to plan to provide students multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate learned or acquired abilities

• Uses multiple data points to validly interpret student readiness

• Considers fluency versus accuracy in student's language production

• Isolating and monitoring proficiency, course content, and participation separately

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View of Materials

Materials:

• Vary, as long as they promote communicative competence

• May be text-based

• May include games, role plays, simulations, task-based communication, cue cards, worksheets with missing information requiring interaction to complete, or realia

• Embed technology that provides engaging and motivating comprehensible input

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With my philosophy toward language education now laid out for you, let's take a look at what the ProficiencyBuilder Model is actually, how it is different compared to traditional models, and how it works.

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