Meeting the Advanced-Level Oral Proficiency Challenge with Ubiquitous Technology and Performance-Based Assessments

This presentation deals with the challenge faced by foreign language programs charged with the responsibility of ensuring that their graduate majors attain an advanced level of oral proficiency. It focuses in particular upon the situation in US colleges and universities, which have a long track record of failing in this regard. Three main problems contribute to this failure: time on task, insufficient language teaching, and a lack of metalinguistic awareness. These issues are addressed within a pedagogical model based on the integration of ubiquitous technology and performance-based assessments for advanced level language learning.

Over the past 50 years, it has been consistently demonstrated that in US colleges and universities large numbers of traditional foreign language majors (i.e., no native/heritage language background) graduate without advanced-level skills (Carroll 1967; Hamlyn, Surface & Swender 2007). This is especially the case for oral proficiency, with only about half of graduates attaining an advanced-low (B2 CEFR) level on the American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (Ball, 2010; Glisan, Swender & Surface 2013). One of the obvious obstacles in achieving advanced proficiency is time on task. It is suggested that learners need at least 720 contact hours to reach the advanced level (Malone, Rifkin, Christian & Johnson, 2003) and yet most foreign language majors get 320 hours at best. A second obstacle is that advanced level content-heavy courses that focus primarily on literature, linguistics and culture seldom provide an environment that explicitly scaffolds continuous language learning necessary to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced level proficiencies (Donato & Brooks, 2004). A third problem is that learners in advanced-level courses don’t know what is expected of them, making it difficult to progress along the proficiency continuum. This presentation provides a pedagogical model that aims to overcome these problems through the integration of ubiquitous technology for presentational speaking performance that fosters learner autonomy and can be adapted to any upper-division context. Specifically, this case study demonstrates how a Social Media Content Creation Tool (SMCCT), Adobe Spark Video, was explicitly aligned to the NCSSFLACTFL Can-Do Statements and ACTFL Performance Descriptors, to target presentational speaking for a senior capstone course in Spanish. This technology allowed for the creation of preparatory exercises undertaken largely out of class, thereby substantially increasing time on task. These activities provided learners the opportunity to work towards oral proficiency gains a step above their current individual competence, while becoming more autonomous through four key elements in a learner autonomy framework: awareness, choice, reflection, and goal-setting. A step-by-step guide with examples and survey results about student perceptions shows how this was accomplished. The guide includes Common European Framework equivalencies and can be adapted to any content and language at the upper-intermediate and advanced levels.