“Scholarship and Learning in Another Language: Proficiency Expectations and Realities”
In the absence of evidence, proficiency expectations tend to be higher than what seems reasonable. Students do not achieve advanced levels of proficiency after one or two years of foreign language study. As a matter of fact, advanced levels of oral proficiency at graduation, even for language majors who studied abroad for one or two semesters, appear elusive for many. The study presented in this paper suggests that it may be the lack of a principled approach to developing listening proficiency that holds students back in the development of both, their listening and speaking abilities.
In my paper, I will first focus on the results of a large nation-wide study, comprising more than three thousand students at 21 colleges and universities, investigating student proficiency levels at major milestones throughout their college career. I will then look at the relationship between reading, speaking, and listening proficiency, and I will discuss the implications of the study for helping students reach the advanced proficiency levels required to become successful researchers and scholars in another language.
Bio
Erwin Tschirner (Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley) is Gerhard-Helbig-Professor of German as a Foreign Language and Chair of the Herder Institute at the University of Leipzig. His main areas of research include test research and test development, the acquisition of speaking, listening and reading abilities, vocabulary acquisition, German morphology and syntax, and corpus linguistics. He has taught at universities in the United States, Cuba, Argentina, and Germany and he has lectured and consulted widely in many parts of the world. He is editor of Aligning Frameworks of Reference in Language Testing: The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Stauffenburg 2012) and coauthor of Kontakte: A Communicative Approach (McGraw-Hill 2016) and A Frequency Dictionary of German: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge 2006). He has published numerous articles, book chapters, books, and edited volumes in the field of foreign language teaching, learning, and assessment. He has been a tester and tester trainer for the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview since 1989 and 1993, respectively, and was a contributing author to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012.