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Proficiency-Oriented Language
Instruction and Assessment:
A Curriculum Handbook for Teachers
Diane J. Tedick, Editor
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This handbook for teachers was designed to provide world language teachers
with the background knowledge, ideas, and resources for
implementing proficiency-oriented language instruction
and classroom-based performance measures into their curriculum.
Tied to the national Standards for Foreign Language Education,
the Handbook gives teachers a solid foundation of the principles
and practices that are central to standards-based and
proficiency-oriented language instruction and assessment.
The Handbook gives teachers a wide variety of tasks and
activities to use in the classroom along with ideas for
adapting these activities for different levels and languages
and longer curricular packages.The Handbook was originally
created by members of the Minnesota Articulation Project.
While the handbook is still available in print through
the CARLAmworking paper series most of the handbook is
now available online.
The Goals and Organization of the Handbook
Goals
The fundamental goal of the Handbook is to provide teachers with reasons,
ideas, and resources for rethinking curriculum and instruction
with an eye toward enhancing students’ language proficiency levels.
It is not intended to be a mandate for curriculum development
nor is it intended to act as a
language textbook. It was developed with the goal of providing
a framework for teachers as they consider different ways of
planning curriculum and instruction to correspond to a standards-based
model and may be a valuable resource in classes for preservice
and inservice teacher development. We
believed that such a goal would best be accomplished by:
- describing the directions in which the field is headed (as reflected
in the national and state standards);
- explaining some of the theory--what we know and believe about language
learning and teaching;
- describing ways to assess language proficiency through performance-basedmeasures;
- providing teachers with a plethora of ideas that illustrate the connection
between theory and practice; and
- providing teachers with an extensive list of resources to enhance their
curriculum and instruction.
Organization of the Handbook
The Handbook is divided into the following sections:
Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction and Assessment:
Standards, Philosophies, and Considerations for Assessment
This section describes the key factors underlying our primary goal--proficiency-oriented
language instruction and assessment (POLIA). It explains
the state and national movements toward standards-based
language instruction, offers an in-depth account of the
philosophical principles that guided the development of
the Handbook and provides a detailed explanation
of performance assessment that is congruent with a standards-based
approach to proficiency-oriented language instruction.
Key Materials
This section includes copies of or links to important documents that
support
the material in the Handbook.
Tasks and Units
This section includes a wide range of classroom tasks and thematic units
to support proficiency-oriented language instruction and asessment.
Each task and unit appears in a standard format or template
that stipulates the corresponding theme, standards, level,
purpose, functions, language
structures, cultural aspects, and modalities. In an effort
to encourage participation from teachers across the state,
we invited second language teachers to submit tasks and ideas
to be considered for the Handbook. As ideas were submitted,
they were considered, reworked, refined, and revised
by the curriculum team to correspond to the format that we
had devised. Thus, their current form represents the creative
ideas and talents of many individuals.
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