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This handbook 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 CARLA working paper series, most of the materials are now available online.
Goals of the Handbook
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-based measures;
- 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.
Handbook Sections
Background
Information
Provides an overview of the development of the Handbook as
part of the Minnesota Articulation Project and includes acknowledgement
of all the participating teachers who contributed to this
project.
Proficiency
Oriented Language Instruction and Assessment:
Standards, Philosophies, and Considerations for Assessment
Diane Tedick describes the key factors underlying the primary
goal of this work--proficiency-oriented language instruction
and assessment (POLIA). She 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
Provides copies of or links to several important documents
that support the material in the Handbook in one easy to reference
section.
Tasks
and Units
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.
Resources
for Teachers
Offers an extensive list of resources for teachers that are
divided into four sub-sections: General Resources, and Resources
for teachers of French, German, and Spanish.