On the Function, Content, and Accuracy of Graven Images

Abstract

Can the ACTFL/ETS Proficiency Guidelines' be used not just for testing purposes, but as a guide for curricular innovation? This question, along with its positive and negative responses, is regularly found in the current pedagogical literature.2 By casting our votes this way or that, we uphold or reject the suitability of an abstract (even one based on exhaustive real-world testing experience) for planning lessons, course materials, even entire curricula. We state-and quite properly so-that it is misleading to promise students that they will reach a certain proficiency level after a certain number of hours of language learning. And yet there does seem to be than a little predictive validity in suggesting that, by and large, a class taught according to certain principles should be able to perform certain linguistic tasks within given contextual environments with a certain degree of accuracy. Now, those who have been teaching with the Proficiency Guidelines in mind might be outraged at all the academic qualifiers attached to that last statement: seem, more than a little, suggesting, the flurry of certains. Do the Guidelines really help or do they not? Fortunately we can use the Guidelines to design course materials without throwing in with one camp or another, and we can do so with some satisfying, even impressive, results in student performance. As an example, I have applied the lessons of the Guidelines to a topic that fascinates us, whether we want it to or not: death.