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PRIORITY=CURRICULUM ARTICULATION Addressing Curm’culum Articulation in the Nineties: A Proposal Heidi Byrnes Georgetown University In selecting articulation as a priority for the 9Os, the American Council on the %aching of Foreign Languages recognizes that the topic, though by no means unfamiliar, is likely to oc- cupy a particularlyprominent place in our future professional agenda. Background and Statement of Problem Previousdiscussion of articulationby Lange (16) gives a highly informativeoverview of ma- jor concepts that must be defined when one Wishes to understand articulationand, ultimate- ly, to reduce problems caused by lack of articula- tion. Lange identifies the following terms: 1) horizontal articulation, “a coordination of any curriculum across the many or several classes that are simultaneously attempting to ac- complish the same objectives” @. 115); 2) ver- tical articulation, which “refers to the continuity of a program throughout the length of the pro- gram” @. 115), and 3) interdisciplinary and multidisciplinaryarticulation which addresses the “capability of a second language as a school subject to associate with other disciplinesin the curriculum” (p. 116). Inherently,the concept of articulation recognizesand respectsthe require- ment for educational programs to attain their goals in the most efficient and effective way given the educational setting within which students undertake the study of a certain discipline, in this case foreign languages. Heidi Bymes (Ph. D., Georgetown University) is Associate Professor of German at Georgetown Uniety, Washington, D.C., and chair of the German Department. In its central sense articulation refers to the wellmotivated and well designed sequencing and coordinationof instructiontoward certaingoals. Vertical articulation is at the core of the issue. It speaks most directly to how specific learning goals, however determined, can in fact be at- tained. Therefore,the firsttask in developing an articulated curriculum is to assure that specific goals have indeed been stated and that they are defined in ways that permit conversion into realisticcurricular and performance objectives. Nevertheless, it can be argued quite convinc- ingly that horizontal and inter-/multidisciplinary articulation are no less important aspects of the entire complex of optimal curriculum design than is verticalarticulation (16). Horizontal ar- ticulation is primarily a matter of supervision and coordination of instruction within a given program. At the secondary level this is likely to be one of the key tasks of the building foreign language coordinator; at the college level the most prominent horizontal articulationtask is accomplished by the TA supervisorwho assures comparability among multi-section classes. Finally, interdisciplinary articulation suggests itself as the ideal path for foreign languages to become mainstreamed into American public educationwhere numerous disciplines are vying for allocations of scarce time and financial resom. Interdisciplinary articulation can take a whole m g e of forms, from a relatively simple coordination of topics between the foreign language and, for example, the social studies classes, to the total integration of language and content instruction of immersion programs. hmign Language Annals, 23, No. 4,1990 281

Addressing Curriculum Articulation in the Nineties: A Proposal

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PRIORITY= CURRICULUM ARTICULATION Addressing Curm’culum Articulation

in the Nineties: A Proposal Heidi Byrnes

Georgetown University

In selecting articulation as a priority for the 9Os, the American Council on the %aching of Foreign Languages recognizes that the topic, though by no means unfamiliar, is likely to oc- cupy a particularly prominent place in our future professional agenda.

Background and Statement of Problem Previous discussion of articulation by Lange

(16) gives a highly informative overview of ma- jor concepts that must be defined when one Wishes to understand articulation and, ultimate- ly, to reduce problems caused by lack of articula- tion. Lange identifies the following terms: 1) horizontal articulation, “a coordination of any curriculum across the many or several classes that are simultaneously attempting to ac- complish the same objectives” @. 115); 2) ver- tical articulation, which “refers to the continuity of a program throughout the length of the pro- gram” @. 115), and 3) interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary articulation which addresses the “capability of a second language as a school subject to associate with other disciplines in the curriculum” (p. 116). Inherently, the concept of articulation recognizes and respects the require- ment for educational programs to attain their goals in the most efficient and effective way given the educational setting within which students undertake the study of a certain discipline, in this case foreign languages.

Heidi Bymes (Ph. D., Georgetown University) is Associate Professor of German at Georgetown U n i e t y , Washington, D.C., and chair of the German Department.

In its central sense articulation refers to the wellmotivated and well designed sequencing and coordination of instruction toward certain goals. Vertical articulation is at the core of the issue. It speaks most directly to how specific learning goals, however determined, can in fact be at- tained. Therefore, the first task in developing an articulated curriculum is to assure that specific goals have indeed been stated and that they are defined in ways that permit conversion into realistic curricular and performance objectives.

Nevertheless, it can be argued quite convinc- ingly that horizontal and inter-/multidisciplinary articulation are no less important aspects of the entire complex of optimal curriculum design than is vertical articulation (16). Horizontal ar- ticulation is primarily a matter of supervision and coordination of instruction within a given program. At the secondary level this is likely to be one of the key tasks of the building foreign language coordinator; at the college level the most prominent horizontal articulation task is accomplished by the TA supervisor who assures comparability among multi-section classes. Finally, interdisciplinary articulation suggests itself as the ideal path for foreign languages to become mainstreamed into American public education where numerous disciplines are vying for allocations of scarce time and financial resom. Interdisciplinary articulation can take a whole m g e of forms, from a relatively simple coordination of topics between the foreign language and, for example, the social studies classes, to the total integration of language and content instruction of immersion programs.

hmign Language Annals, 23, No. 4,1990 281

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While the broad divisions identified above are rather noncontroversial, the meanings of other key terms discussed by Lange in conjunction with articulation, such as learner outcomes, per- formance objectives, teaching strategies, materials, and procedures for the evaluation of outcomes, are far less likely to encounter agree- ment in the profession. Any answer, by design or by default, will necessarily be grounded in the respondent’s understanding of the profession’s goals.

Such a reminder may be perceived as an un- necessary note of caution in today’s professional climate where communicatively oriented language teaching seems to be advocated by all influential parties. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to state that we have, in fact, found in com- municatively oriented language teaching the desired consensus on a national agenda. Assum- ing that the steps actual& taken taward implement- ing curriculum, e.g., methods, materials, modes of evaluation, are a better indication of where the profession really stands than are professional journal articles and meeting agendas, then we are far from agreement on our goals.

The gap between professional desiderata and practice is exemplified clearly in two areas: materials and testing. The textbook market, in production and sales, is a powerful and tell-tale manifestation of the existence of a wide variety of persuasions, not to mention the fact that it provides continued evidence for a well-known phenomenon of long standing, the textbook essentially serving as curriculum (2, 9). One might even go as far as to say that we have a de facto national curriculum, arrived at via materials adoption criteria and procedures (3). Similarly, the advocated shift from an emphasis on normed language to an emphasis on the pro- cess of language acquisition merely highlights the maladjustment of current testing practices. I am here referring to the matter of variation. By continuing to insist on traditional psychometric standards for second language testing, high test reliability and, especially, high internal con- sistency, the very nature of recent findings in second language acquisition research is being ignored. As Swain (29) argues, “measures of reliability that depend on the notion of internal test consistency are incompatible with our

current understanding of second language proficiency.” The profession as a whole, and the testing community in particular, have yet to address and “rethink the whole concept of accuracy and consistency of second language measures.” We have yet to devise “‘meaningful quality criteria’ for the inclusion of test items rather than rely on a measure of internal con- sistency” (29).

In view of the foregoing reservations, how much importance should we attribute to a professional dialogue that has, for some time now, favored students’ communicative language ability as the desirable instructional focus for the end of the century? Certainly, such an emphasis on functional use cannot be dismissed as negligible information. But its prevailing interpmtion deserves a closer look. In focUsing on interactive spoken language,communicative language teaching has most frequently been contrasted, explicitly or implicitly, with an emphasis on students’ knowledge of grammar or, at a higher level, metalinguistic reflection about the language. However, it is worth remind- ing ourselves that this contrast is not the only possible opposition or characterization: within instructed language learning in America, the goal of functional language use can also be defined in other ways, and these are not necessarily renegade or uninformed ways (24). For example, an emphasis on functional use with literate language, particularly at the college level, would result in an agenda for communicative language teaching far different from the prevail- ing one. Let me qualify and expand on this last remark.

There is a sense in which unarticulated curricula result because of our inability to specify the progression that language learning can and does take and because of our vague notions of program content for undergraduate majors. Presumably, the rift between much middle school language teaching and high school instruction (15,19,20,23) exemplifies this kind of unarticulated curriculum. But unarticulated curricula can come about in other ways as well, most dramatically through a diversity of goals. Indeed, such a diversity exists over the entire cur- ricular span of American public education and at different stages within it. Perhaps the best-

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known example of this disagreement is the chasm between minimalist language instruction concentrating on interaction, and the goals of literate language use in upper division courses in many college curricula. Since its repercussions for instruction are insufficiently acknowledged, our curriculum has been subject to unusually strong pulls by the professional powers associated with specific instructional levels. The result has been a quilt of curricular patchwork with no clearly discernible overall pattern. This is ultimately, perhaps, the most serious instance of unarticulated curriculum.

But our difficulties in resolving the problem of articulation do not stop with the potential for divergent goals. Even if we can clarify and agree upon some major types of instructional goals, we are far from a blueprint on how each desired goal for language use is to be brought about over time. So where shall we turn for guidance in establishing an articulated curriculum? Our profession’s progress must be more than agreement that descriptions of instructional goals in terms of seat time are meaningless. Functional use or proficiency must be able to accommodate non-adult learners who are likely to be taught by a less grammar-centered, more situationembedded method, thus might be expected to have greater sociolinguistic and pragmatic abilities and good evidence of accurate pronunciation and fluency, though, perhaps, less grammatical accuracy. And it must be able to recognize the adult learners’ language ability in a restricted area of highly specified use, typically associated with instructed language, though that hardly qualifies for the curriculum- independent meaning of the term “proficiency.” Are we relegated to the vague notion that we somehow need to rethink the incorporation of “grammar”? Is the rift between an interactive use orientation and a literate use orientation to be permanently unbridgeable? Perhaps the fact that we have expanded our view of language, from a language replication paradigm to a language creation paradigm (26, p. 56), means that we no longer enjoy a foundation in firm grammatical norms. Instead, successful articula- tion must now deal with the inconsistencies of the individual learner’s creative and error-prone approximations of the language to be learned.

Some New Professional Realities Whatever the solutions to these problems, we

must consider at least the following conditions under which we will be conducting our profes- sional activities.

1. The Expanded Curriculum With the rapid expansion of foreign language

requirements and foreign language programs, the need for coordinated continuity includes much more than the traditional dilemma of an imperfect transition between high schools and colleges. The call for a well motivated sequenc- ing of instruction now applies to a curriculum that is significantly extended over time and already shows every sign of being disjointed at least at two other instructional junctures: from the elementary to the middle school or junior high school years, and from that level to the high schools.

Fortunately this rapid expansion also has the potential of pointing to a solution. For the first time in perhaps three decades, we can take the long view on educational and L2 development, rather than always working with disturbingly reduced sights. We can construct a curriculum that gives proper recognition to the fact that, in language learning, perhaps more than in other fields, what is overtly taught is not what is immediately learned or internalized or available for use. We have always known that such a simplistic one-to-one relationship does not exist, but we could not entertain any real solutions because the necessary longer sequence simply was not available to the profession. Now, however, we must dare to articulate the com- plexities of the relationship between teaching and learning, and spell them out over the expanded curriculum.

2. The Levels of Pqflciency As instruction is extended, it will encompass

levels of language ability that have heretofore not been within the mch of American public educa- tion. Much of past curricular, pedagogical, methodological, and instructional discussion has focused on the beginning of language learning. Very little interest and effort have been expended on what it means to become an advanced learner of an L2. Events are

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necessitating such efforts. Inmasingly frequent mandates for foreign language instruction at the elementary level, such as that instituted by the state of North Carolina, will force us to look at longer sequences. Only with a better developed sense on how to continue past the basics will we be able to avoid the ignominious outcomes for ultimatelanguage ability attained inconjunction with the FLES movement of the 60s.

To avoid repetition of this debacle and to strengthen program building, several points deserve clarification:

The younger our learners are at the begin- ning of instruction, the more holistic, seman- tically based their language learning is likely to be for a number of years (6). The range of advan- tages to be reaped from this development is im- measurable. Among the desired outcomes, we can expect to find significantly improved listen- ing comprehension, much more native-like pronunciation, a better feel for the socially motivated and socially derived aspect of language use, a greatly expanded set of communicative strategies tied to enhanced pragmatic awareness, and a deeper appreciation of the culture- specificity of language.

However, early and even continued exposure is no guarantee of ultimate attainment in a foreign language. The benefits of an extended sequence accrue because of qualitatively different instruction as learners progress. In particular, they depend crucially on a careful balancing between vastly enriched input over the expanded instructional time, but also on significantly expanded opportunities for output of a much broader range than we have previously been able to target. Essentially, we must find ways in the well articulated curriculum to gradually supplant the intuitive semantic grammar of comprehensible input with the reflected syntactic grammar of comprehensible output (28,30).

Furthermore, such metalinguistic awareness which comes with syntactic analysis must be built up over the entire spectrum of language use that marks an adult user of the language. This means that, once learners’ oral language has reached a balance between the two aspects of ac- curacy and fluency - a reasonable goal for the end of secondary schooling - an articulated

curriculum must focus on creatively guiding the learner further to using literate registers of the foreign language, both in oral and wrim modes of communication. No delay in literacy educa- tion in the sense of withholding from beginning L2 learners in the earlier years both oral and written texts that favor literary features of the language is advocated. On the contrary, more than ever, language teaching must truly integrate all modes of language use right from the start. Certain features of literate language are likely to prove particularly memorable for younger learners as well as linguistic adults. This is so because literate texts rely on highly regularized, even stylized relationships between formal features and textual function. In fact, well developed schemata are a critical factor support- ing comprehension, and in the case of oral texts, retention. Ultimately, the ability to comprehend language through schematizing is one of the key characteristics of the advanced level learner who deals extensively with texts that do not have the immediate context of situation (27) which supports much of interactive, conversational oral language.

3. The Expanded Learner Group The call for articulation has particular urgen-

cy now and into the immediate future because our instructional efforts must meet, within a relatively short adjustment time, the needs of a significantly enlarged group of learners, not only the self-selected group of academic learners that has traditionally opted for foreign language study (6). Very likely we will be dealing with students with diverse interests, cognitive styles, and learning strategies, not to mention different goals for language learning. Instead of inter- preting this as a lowering of standards or a re- quirement to work under less than optimal con- ditions, we should expand our awareness of how language learning, in general, takes place and then incorporate as much of that as possible in- to the second language classroom.

4. The Learning Process Within the profession, a paradigm shift about

what constitutes the essence of language, but even more, about what constitutes the essence of L2 language learning, is taking place (26). This

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paradigm shift manifests itself most strikingly in an emphasis on the progression of learning in place of an emphasis on whether a learner can produce specific language in a specific com- municative instance. It focuses on the sisnificance of the creative contributions of the apprentice learner in relation to the materials taught, and is concerned with recursive and threshold language learning. Such learning is characterized by a readiness to deal with certain features of lan- guage at a given stage in the second language learning process. As an approach, it reintegrates usage opportunity throughout the course se- quence and contrasts with a linear, f d sequenc- ing of major chunks of the language that is divorced from the learner (22).

5. The Changed Societal Attitude toward Language

A fmal vital consideration is that the greater demand for better articulated programs is related to pervasive societal and public policy considera- tions (1). The societal setting in which we lead our professional lives and perform our profes- sional services lends a certain urgency to our response to issues such as

- the acknowledged need for high levels of language competency in an increasingly in- terdependent and increasingly more competitive global marketplace; - America’s expanding involvement with speakers of major, yet traditionally less com- monly taught languages (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Korean), languages whose instructional canon is less developed and which are particularly difficult for native speakers of English; - the requirement for stringent accountability in public education.

While we may view prevailing expectations regarding language learning with some suspi- cion, we must seize the opportunities these ex- pectations entail for our goals by fmding ways in which a well articulated curriculum can address both the information transmission quality of a language - what we typically perceive as socie- ty’s goals - as well as the deeply educational value of cultural and linguistic competency in a foreign language.

A Framework for Addressing Articulation Let me characterize the framework I am about

to propose in two ways. On the one hand, this framework is intended to recognize the pluralism of instructional settings, purposes, goals, and approaches that is peculiar to the American scene, a pluralism that only seems to be increas- ing in light of the trends just identified. On the other hand, it recoBnjzes f e a t m of the learners’ educational development in general, second language learning in an instructed setting, in par- ticular (10). This progression starts with the young, beginning learner and follows through to the mature adult, advanced learner.

I realize that such a progression is an ideal, since only a very small share of our learners will, in fact, participate in a full course of study. But initially exemplifying the issues in this fashion should clarify the central features of this type of articulation. As regards educational development, my

remarks draw heavily on insights presented by Egan (12) who sees such development less in terms of genetic epistemology (as does Piaget’s theoretical work), than in terms of the “educa- tional aspects of development, learning, and motivation” which “directly yields principles for engaging children in learning, for unit and lesson planning, and for curriculum oxganizhg“ (p. 6). The distinguishing characteristic of this ap- proach is that it sees development as occurring in terms of different ways of making sense of the world. These, in turn, require noticeably dif- ferent ways of organizing the knowledge that is to be learned through formal schooling. Egan identifies four main stages, the mythic, the romantic, the philosophic, and the ironic stage.

Such a stance indicates a major departure from received practice in that curricula can take a broader view of what constitutes suitable con- tent than they have in the past. Indeed, it might not even be appropriate to organize content as progressing from the individual outward to ever larger circles of events and phenomena in the world, essentially making selections according to personal proximity or relevance, however de- fined. Instead, we may well find that it is not so much the content that impacts on its learnabili- ty as it is how knowledge, wherever it is situated, is organized. If true, the foreign language

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curriculum might be able to access the other language and culture much earlier and in terms that are much broader than we have heretofore imagined. Aside from such general developmen- tal considerations, we must, of course, draw on insights from second language acquisition research. But here, too, the task will be less one of transferring results directly to the classroom, than it will be one of identifying thepedagogical phenomena to which these findings apply (8, 10).

In the following I sketch out a progression that attempts to intertwine both these strands, the general developmental strand and the language acquisition strand, into an articulated foreign language curriculum. Considering that previous suggestions for tackling the issue of articulation have, by and large, been preoccupied with in- stitutional concerns and administrative struc- tures, and have shown little interest in the broader issue, which is one of learning, even a tentative step in the direction of addressing the broader issue seems indicated. I realize that the presentation refers more to numerous educated hunches than to totally corroborated research evidence, that it sketches a holistic framework rather than detailing a well spelled out and finely tuned set of recommendations, that it offers a projection of potential more than a summary of tried and true prescriptions.

Articulating the h e w o r k for Curricular Articulation

1. The Elementary Child Learner In terms of general educational development,

Egan (12) characterizes the learner aged 5-10 as thinking in major categories that are not rational and logical but emotional and moral. Identify- ing this period as the learners’ mythic stage, he suggests that the best way to present knowledge is through myths and stories that address this preoccupation while engaging learner interests. At the same time, such stories provide the learners with intellectual security, respect their inability to deal with the concept of “otherness” and the world as an autonomous entity, and cater to their propensity to handle the world in terms of binary opposites.

Nrning to foreign language learning, we observe that, the younger the L2 learner, the

more L2 language learning will resemble L1 learn- ing, even in the instructed setting. Irrespective of the delivery vehicle, i.e., full immersion, partial immersion, FLES, content-enriched FLES, or FLEX, we are likely to find the following characteristics: As learners attempt to make “sense of the

unknown world without in terms of the known world within” (12, p. 14), the story form, with its clear beginning, middle, and end, and its abili- ty to reduce and limit reality, is likely to best ad- dress their needs. Dealing with such basic con- cepts as good and evil, fear and hope, love and hate, stories with their strong emotional and moral categories will foster cognitive, emotional and linguistic growth. Aside from the story form as a primary vehicle for organizing whatever needs to be learned in the foreign language, in- struction benefits from the incorporation of games, chants, rhymes, song, imitative play, magic, and make-believe, all accompanied by a diversity of physical involvement (23).

So what kinds of abilities are elementary learners likely to acquire and bring into the mid- dle school years? While time on task will affect the details, learners’ abilities will reflect a heavy emphasis on comprehension, essentially through listening, rather than on production. Assuming important similarities between first and second language acquisition in the elementary grades, we should expect that children’s “working hypotheses” about the units of language will be very different from the logical and economical descriptions of language as they have become codified in various scientific grammars (21), eg., structuralist grammar, transformational gram- mar, case grammar. Instead of treating language as being built up from individual words and morphemes, their perception of language will reflect a top-down approach, working with ex- tended formulas, partly set partly open, that constitute units of meaning in the contexts within which the learners have experienced them. These contexts are likely to have been groupfocused cooperative tasks, the experience of sound shapes, rhythm, repetition, the joy of the power of language in creating new worlds, of making things come about magically.

Only over an extended period of time, most likely to set in toward the end of the mythic stage

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and into the middle and junior high school years, will learners analyze, from the stream of speech, the operable units of meaning as linguistic analysis of language identifies them. In fact, what Peters (21) states to be the central process for first language acquisition may well apply to early second language acquisition: the central process for the learners is “the extraction of pieces, or ‘units,’ from the speech stream in which the child is immersed” (p. 5). We shall return to this fact subsequently.

2. The Middle School Learner The middle school learner, aged approximate-

ly 8/9 - 14/15 years, is developing “rudimentary but serviceable concepts of ‘otherness’; concepts of historical time, geographical s~pace, physical regularities, logical relationships, and causality” (p. 28). This stage, which Egan terms the mman- tic stage, differs qualitatively from the mythic stage in that learners must now “forge a new relationship and connections with the auton- omous world and so achieve some method of dealing with its threatening alienness” while developing “a sense of their distinct identity” (12, p. 29). They do so by allying themselves with the most powerful elements in the world around them, the noble, the courageous, the beautiful, the brave, the powerful and creative. What is real and what is possible is explored through a zest for details, while stressing “those human qualities that lead to a transcendence over the everyday and commonplace world” (12, p. 33).

On the content side, a “quite sudden fascina- tion with the extremes of what exists and what is known” (12, p. 31) would seem to speak for an early inclusion of some of the stories dealing with the myths and historical and folk heroes and pivotal events central to the culture or cultures to which the language is connected. Beyond that, science fiction or adventure stories fulfii the adolescents’ desire to have reality play a central role while at the same time fashioning their reality in terms of ego-supporting heroes and heroines. As for modes of language learning, instruc-

tion must now target the learners’ ability to seg- ment language more along the lines of the familiar major structural units of the language being acqukd. Peters points out that the larger

chunks that children have previously extracted and acquired must now be further broken down so as to become functional units for creative, flexible, and situationally appropriate use of language (21, p. 109-114). The critical difficulty will be to find the optimal segmentation period for introducing “controlled variation within learned chunks just at the point where they have been well enough learned so that resources are freed for paying attention to structures, but before they have been so well learned as to be automatized’’ (21, p. 112).

This stage in the learners’ development may also be the critical time for connecting language and content instruction, what was pratiously identified as interdisciplinary articulation. In particular, content from geography, history, and social studies meets the learners’ interest in a multitude of facts, while avoiding potential crises of identity.

On the other hand, given the learned “ability to memorize and retain massive amounts of detail, with an efficiency apparently much superior to any other stage of one’s life” (12, p. 36), the use of rote learning and the incorpora- tion of poetry, prose, and short dramatic scenes which allow learners to experience the sounds and rhythms of a language, particularly in rela- tion to their emotional and aesthetic value, are quite appropriate.

Since we know that this “stage of intellectual wonder and excitement is also the stage of most acute boredom” (12, p. 47), I do not at all wish to advocate dull repetition dril ls and mindless pattern practice. But there seems to be evidence that expansions, reductions, variations, substitu- tions of language on the basis of memorized materials can help learners construct their own learner grammars, as long as social mean- ingfulness is not compmmised.

3. The Adult Instructed Learner According to Egan, learners during the

philosophic stage, aged approximately 14/15 to 19/20 years, rapidly abandon the self- empowering romantic world view and come to appreciate their limitations within the con- straints of their particular position. They learn to establish general laws and truths about a whole range of processes, which allows them to

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bring order to the seemingly endless particular and unrelated knowledge in which they revelled previously.

For our discussion of articulation I find particularly noteworthy Egan’s observation that “having enough knowledge to be able to generate from it some general vision of a com- plex process, some ideology, or metaphysical scheme, is a prerequisite for moving beyond the romantic stage and into the philosophic stage of educational development” (12, p. 57). Assum- ing that our extended progression of L2 learning were to become a reality, we might at last be able to assure that learners would have just that kind of requisite “considerable body of knowledge” without which educational development beyond the romantic stage is essentially thwarted.

Furthermore, at this stage of educational development, a different kind of learner process- ing is made possible through higher levels of systematization and generalization. Learners must be able to accomplish a system-wide reorganization of the primary features of their interlanguage grammar, their successively adjusted approximation of what the target language is like, in order to be able to m&e appreciably closer to the actual rule system of the target language (5). Finally, if our articulated sequence could allow learners to have reached advanced levels of language use during this stage, instruction could benefit from rather than be

identified by Egan. I am referring to learners’ reduced interest in particular knowledge for its own sake with the complementary aspect of a willingness to deal with it only insofar as it fits into and allows the building up of larger organizational structures. If that is indeed the case, then previous stages of language instruc- tion should ideally have provided the bulk of the particular knowledge, leaving the learner at this stage free to engage in the important “dialectical process of interaction between general scheme and particular knowledge” (12, p. 64).

hampered by another developmental c- - ‘c

4. The Adult Learner at the Ironic Stage For the purposes of articulating a language

curriculum one might consider language instruc- tion during the ironic stage, occurring from age 19/20 to adulthood, to be of only marginal con-

cern. However, given that the age brackets in- dicated are, of course, only broad appmhnations that vary with individual learners, we should at least mention some of the characteristics of learners at this stage.

While both learners, those at the philosophic and at the ironic stages, are concerned with the relationship of general knowledge and particular realizations, they differ insofar as learners at the philosophic stage lend more weight to general schemes while those at the ironic stage allow par- ticulars to play a special role.

Again, we could obtain striking support between general education and L2 development if our learners at the ironic stage could be approaching the “Superior” level of oral profi- ciency as characterized by the ACTFL scale. That designation refers to learners who have consolidated their general rule knowledge to such an extent that they can effectively attend to particulars, such as pronunciation (25).

Unresolved Issues and Outlook The discussion thus far has not addressed

a number of crucial issues, among them the fact that students enter the progression at different ages, the need for precise goals de- finition prior to curriculum construction, the potential role of proficiency testing for outcome or placement purposes, or the need for strong alliances in order to effect any sort of substantive change.

Far from wishing to appear aloof from the reality of educational practice or from seem- ing to underestimate the invaluable service that local initiatives have provided, I choose to look at what might be a comprehensive way of addressing the issue of curricular sequencing. As we are planning our agenda for the 9Os, the greater danger comes from not taking the extended viewpoint, from preoccupying ourselw with highly specific topics without being able to refer to an enlarged context of language in- struction.

As for justification for cooperative enter- prises, exemplifying their laudable successes, and pointing out work yet to be accomplished, I refer the reader to a number of reports (11,14, 15,17,18,31). I conclude with some brief obser- vations regarding different lengths of study,

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS - SEPTEMBER 1990 289

goals statements, and the role of proficiency in our efforts to strengthen curricular articula- tion.

1. Entering the Pmgmsion at Diffemnt Ages The previous discussion emphasized that we

can no longer take the position that instances of language learning in grades K-12 are essentially the slow and drawn-out, if not to say deficient version of the real thing. Real language learning is not the sole province of the college level. It is wrong to consider the entire sequence of foreign language instruction in the restricted terms of college instruction. This viewpoint completely dis~thatanarticulatedlanguagecurridum must provide for instruction that is qualitative- ly different at various stages of the learners’ educational as well as their L2 development.

An important co~lsequence of these insights is that learners beginning instruction at the junior high, at the secondary level, or, f d y , at the col- lege level, cannot be placed in the same classroom with learners who have had previous L2 experience. Students entering foreign language instruction at different stages and, con- sequently, continuing at different levels, high schools and universities will have to face the need for different tracks, or else the gains to be ob- tained from extended sequences will not be realized. The practice of placing students with extensive previous instruction into beginners’ classes once more - a frequent practice in secondary and postsecondary education - is not only devastating from the standpoint of learner motivation and, thus, educationally totally uI1souI1c1, it is ultimately f d y irrespon- sible. It is this fiscal connection of not providing tracked sequences which must be raised vigorously when smaller classes are denied because of purported fiscal responsibility toward an educational program.

With entry into the curriculum possible at dif- ferent times, a number of issues arise that did not occur in this form with the extended curriculum. I state them in question form, admitting that the answers have yet to be found, but suggesting that the formulation of the question itself implies a direction of inquiry.

-Does it continue to be advantageous to have

an extended period of time with receptive skills work, - in this case listening and reading, thus pushing language production into the later years, or would that invite a situation where speaking skills are likely to be difficult to develop?

- Is it advisable to follow such a route with all beginners, regardless of their general educa- tional development, and, W l y , the number of years of study they might yet undertake? Does this approach become less and less desirable for more mature adult learners who are often only interested in learning to speak in the context of highly defined tasks? Or is it particularly ap- propriate for them because of the motivational advantages of being able to read materials closer to their cognitive level as contrasted with speak- ing under considerable constraints?

- Should one advocate a relatively brief period of comprehension work, followed rather quickly by speaking, frequently the reason learners themselves, particularly at the secondary level, indicate for wishing to study a language, thus an important motivational factor?

-Does such speaking follow a purposely restricted repertoire of language chunks which provides some sense of security? Or can we follow a rather open format, focusing on con- tent? Can we trust in the selfcorrective power of extensive negotiated language use to foster con- tinued development of language abilities, even within the highly restricted settings of most in- structed language learning?

- Is it sufficiently important, against the background of an extremely form-centered per- ception of language learning that exists among much of the American public, to emphasize the communicative, creative aspect of language use at the beginning of language instruction for adolescents, even in light of the fact that solving communicative tasks probably will initially disappoint normative expectations of accuracy?

-Within what period of time can learners be expected to benefit most from something like a tightening of the reins, allowing them to foster and, ultimately, consolidate an awareness of the

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workings of language through grammatical reflection that emphasizes connections between structure and meaning?

All of these questions clearly point out a major dilemma. The kinds of curricular goals statements that have recently sprung up under the proficiency banner are not so much sup- ported by solid theory or detailed knowledge of how language acquisition by different learners at different ages takes place as they are unified by a rejection of what we consider to have been past practice. We are, in general terms, rejecting an emphasis in language instruction on user- independent, invariate norms of language form; we are groping for ways to enhance teaching for the individual apprentice learner who creates meaning with whatever resources are available.

2. Testing Learning Outcomes Let me end with a brief look at outcomes

testing which occupies a prominent place in the discussion about articulation (e.g., 31).

For many, the major instructional shift we are currently experiencing seems best summarized by the term “proficiency” which itself had gained initial prominence as a testing procedure for the assessment of oral language use. “Profi- ciency” captured the imagination because it held out the promise that the old indirect perfor- mance measurements of years of study, grades, or scores on standardized, formcentered tests could finally be abandoned in favor of a more direct global testing procedure targeted at fmc- tional abilities. For many, both the rating scale and the concept of proficiency testing itself became a rallying point for solutions to the prob- lems of articulation.

However, in the range of abilities which the academic proficiency scale has identified as its primary domain and which has become the cor- nerstone of curricular work we are not really dealing with proficiency testing in the strong sense of the word: the independence of testing content from acquisitional history must be and is compromised. What really takes place with in- structed learners is not proficiency-testing but communicatively-oriented, curriculum-based achievement testing (7, 13).

Thus, there is a danger for the misinterpreta-

tion of the Proficiency Guidelines in at least these two related issues that pertain to articula- tion: (1) as blueprints for curricular sequencing and (2) as ways of assessing learner outcomes. The danger is that both the curricular statements being developed and the assessment to be used for indicating the attainment of curricular goals may be predicated on the assumption that learners should be taught the kind of linguistic material that proficiency testing has indicated they can readily produce. One presumes that, sine proficiency testing has indicated that begin- ning learners will, for quite some time, speak at the word, phrase, and sentence level in content areas that pertain to their own restricted world, language instruction should likewise focus on these areas, in its pedagogical and in its content thrust. By ignoring the long incubation period for higher level language learning, by failing to recognize the developmental curve for learning preferences - from holistic to analytical to metacognitively grounded holistic processing - such a curricular short circuit ignores both the learning developmental stages as Egan has clarified them as well as much evidence from second language acquisition research.

Proficiency can become the cornerstone for articulation only if we look at language ability in the broader sense of the learning goals underly- ing the Guidelines, not in the Guidelines statements themselves. These might be concepts like grammar, cohesion, and sensitivity to register expressed in terms of degrees of control and range (4), or the learner’s processing capabilities as measured against features of fluency and accuracy on the word, phrase, sentence, paragraph and discourse levels (7). Without these adjustments, proficiency is at once too broadly conceived and too narrowly in- terpreted as to be applicable for articulation.

The immeasurable value of the concept of proficiency is its potential for directing us toward probing features of second language develop- ment and language use, a frame of reference within which many of the issues that confront us, including articulation, can become clearer. In particular, the experience with proficiency testing has exposed the folly of arbitrarily setting purely linguistic performance goals, be these for secondary or for postsecondary programs, a

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS - SEPTEMBER 1990 291

practice which results in curricula being developed downward, eg., from the high schools into 8th grade, and from there to 6th grade and so on down. Such an approach by-passes the essential step of analyzing existing goals and practices, and leads to the kind of frustrating crunch that has poisoned much of foreign language education, for teachers and learners alike. Even if a holistic understanding of the con- cept of proficiency itself often cannot provide ready answers, it has given us a widely shared set of criteria, and has alerted us to avenues of in- quiry which regional or local groups of profes- sionals can then turn into viable solutions.

In planning for the 9Os, we are mindful that ef- forts toward dialogue, cooperation, and con- sensus-building have not guaranteed results in the past. However, the professional momentum over the last ten years and the opportunities for further growth in the near future are such, that the hope for creative solutions, even for issues as intractable as articulation, is not entirely un- justified. While articulation in the foreign language curriculum is clearly a national issue, its most viable and most expeditiously imple- mented solutions are likely to occur at the regional and local level. If national organizations and national forums help to establish a well- considered framework, then they will have pro- vided a valuable service for the kind of informed discussion at the regional or local level that is the precursor to successful action for the benefit of language learning.

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Association for Supervision and Curricular Development Newsletter. June 1989. Bachman, Lyle and Sandra J. Savignon. “The Evaluation of Communicative Language Profi- ciency: A Critique of the ACTFL Oral Inter- view.” Modern Language Journal 70.4 (1986): 380-90.

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20. Pesola, Carol Ann. “Articulation for Elementary School Foreign h g u a g e Programs: Challenges and Opportunities,” in John F. Lalande, 11, ed., Shaping the Futum of Language Eaucation. FLES, Articulation, andPrqficienq. Report of the Central States Conference on the %aching of Foreign Languages (1988): 1-10.

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22. Pienemann, Manfred. “Psychological Con- straints on the Teachability of Languages.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 6, 2 (1984): 186-214.

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24. Sachs, Murray. “The Foreign Language Cur- riculum and the Orality-Literacy Question.” ADFL Bulletin 20,2 (1989): 70-75.

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, Katherine Arens, and Heidi Bymees. Reading forMan& An IntegmtedAp pmach to Language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

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NOTE: In the article, “Spanish for Native Speakem Freirian and Vygotskian A?peCtives” by Christian Faltis (Foreign Language Annals, Vblume 23, Number 2, April 1990, pages 117-126), Figure2 on page 123 should have read “Figure2 originally developed by Robert A. DeVillar.” The author regrets any inconvenience this omission may have caused.