Implementing Model Curriculum Standards

The recently published Standards for Learning World Languages guide teachers and students to teach and learn a foreign language of choice in ways that prepares them for life and career plans. The problem is that the Standards added the post secondary. It now includes elementary, middle, high school, and college in the progress indicators and achievable student learning outcomes. It is necessary to review the teaching and learning at the college level because this plan is meant to encourage school systems to consider a long-term sequential approach, comparable to math, science, and language arts, to permit learners the opportunity to gain greater proficiency in the language they chose to study. The standards emphasize proficiency in communication that is supported by culture, connections, comparisons and community. At the college level teachers must teach for proficiency. When teaching for proficiency, grammar, literature, and culture, are presented not as ends to themselves but as integral parts of the whole experience of learning a second language. This is an initial step to a proposal that will be to obtain both collaboration from members of the department and funding for the project. The results of the project will be shared at its completion