Teaching Spanish to Hispanic Bilinguals: A Look at Oral Proficiency Testing and the Proficiency Movement

Abstract

A little over ten years ago, very few members of the Spanish-teaching profession had begun to concern themselves with teaching the language to Hispanic bilinguals. Normally, the term native-speaking or Spanish-speaking was applied by members of our profession to those individuals who came from Spain or Latin America and who had been raised with Spanish as both a home and societal language. The question of what to do with Chicano and Puerto Rican students who had grown up in Spanish-speaking homes in this country and who had received all of their education in English-language schools had not yet surfaced in our classes nor in our thinking in any significant way. What little work had been done up to that time has taken the position that Hispanic bilinguals were a problem and had focused on the differences between the varieties spoken by these students and the prestige variant normally used in the classroom. Curriculum guides and masters theses had appeared, as had two textbooks, all of which took the position that Spanish instruction for these students had best undo the damage that had been done at home.' Now, many years later, most members of our profession are aware of the fact that special approaches are needed for teaching Spanish to Hispanic bilinguals. At this point, it is generally accepted that, while some attention may need to be given to the stigmatized features present in students' regional and/or class varieties, the objectives of classes for such speakers must include the development of their overall proficiency in the Spanish language. This means that attention must be given to: (1) developing students' command of the written language so that their ability to read and write in Spanish mirrors these same abilities in English, and (2) developing their oral language so that they will be able to interact in Spanish in both informal and formal contexts.