Highlights of The Language Educator 10.4 2015


The Language Educator Volume 10.4 and the Poster on Oral Proficiency in the Workplace
The latest issue of The Language Educator includes a poster on Oral Proficiency in the Workplace.
by Ann Abbott

I always enjoy reading The Language Educator, ACTFL's magazine that goes out to all its members. Here are some highlights from this issue.

Poster: Oral Proficiency Levels in the Workplace. 

This is the first thing you will notice in the magazine, because as soon as you pick it up, the glued in poster has a different feel. Here are some quick ideas about how you might use it.
  1. Goal setting. Ask students (and colleagues!) to look at the right hand column and see how much time and energy they need to dedicate to language learning in order to reach higher proficiency and more complex professional tasks.
  2. Script writing. Match up the Intermediate Mid row with the Corresponding Professions/Positions column, and ask students to discern what some of the "highly predictable contexts" would be for those positions, and have them write scripts based on the repetitive language they would use.
  3. Study abroad offerings. Ask students to analyze the study abroad offerings at their college and draw conclusions about how far they can go in the proficiency level with each program.
  4. Narrate. Looking at the Advanced categories, ask students to choose one of the professions-positions listed and write a brief, pertinent narration in past, present and future.
  5. What else? I´m sure you could come up with many ideas. Take a look at these interviews with professionals to see what skills and types of language are needed.

Leadership and Languages

I have heard Sheri Spain Long present on this topic at a conference and in a webinar, and the article in this issue builds on that work of hers. I think that our students want to know how to be ethical leaders, working across languages and cultures. Let´s guide them!

Focus: Transforming the Pathway to Learning

I found ¨A Roadmap for Implementing Can-Do Statements in the Language Classroom¨ to be helpful, especially because of its concrete examples. p. 29. I learned about something new: protocols. The examples on pages 37-39 are very interesting and suggestive. I think that we can all identify with the examples of disengaged and disheartened students in ¨The Roles of Competence, Perception, Identities, and Selves in Language Learning Motivation¨ (pp. 44-48). All the articles are good and informative.

TECHwatch

My children like gaming, but I do not. So I tend to ignore that emerging area of language instruction. The piece by Julie Sykes (p. 59), however, gives insight into games, both about specific places and those that are simply in the target language.

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