Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

Learning and Measurement
Language teaching has experienced numerous curricular 
innovations in response to the importance of providing stu-
dents with opportunities to acquire and practice the foreign 
language in contextualized and meaningful language commu-
nicative tasks at all stages of the second or foreign language 
acquisition process. Communicative language teaching (CLT), 
the term most associated with current discussion of method, 
emerged as a significant approach that found universal reso
-
nance and support in theory and application in many contexts 
and across disciplines (linguists, methodologists, and curric-
ulum developers). Central to the rise of CLT was the realiza-
tion that linguistic competence does not on its own achieve 
communicative competence (Canale and Swain, 1980) and that 
language used in meaningful, authentic contexts is more read-
ily acquired.
Pair work, group work, cooperative/collaborative learn-
ing settings, authentic materials, culturally integrated lesson 
content, and interactive tasks focused on the cognitive and af-
fective domains were integrated into foreign language class-
rooms. In addition, there has been a call for the reconceptual-
ization of theoretical underpinnings related to use of the target 
language for language instruction.
Past instructional policies have been dominated by mono-
lingual instructional principles largely unsupported by empiri-
cal evidence. In today’s multilingual classrooms there is a need 
to revisit the common assumptions that translation from L2 to 
L1 (or L3 to L2 for that matter) has no place in the teaching of 
language or literacy, that instruction should be carried out ex-
clusively in the target language without recourse to students’ 
L1, and that L1 and L2 should be kept rigidly separate (Cum-
mins, 2010). In contrast to these assumptions, recent research 
has shed light on the fact that the L1 should be seen as a cog-
nitive and linguistic resource that can function as a stepping 
stone to support more effective performance in the L2 (p. 238).
Furthermore, constructivist teaching practices, influenced 
by Vygotsky’s emphasis on social interaction in learning and 
development, helped learners to internalize and reshape new 
information. The theoretical underpinnings of Vygotsky’s 
(1978) view of language learning that maintained contextual-
ized input in cooperative, meaningful interactions with oth-
ers formed a basis for Sociocultural Theory (SCT), which has 
enhanced language acquisition and taken hold in classrooms 
around the globe. According to Lantolf and Pavlenko (1995), 
the goal of SCT is to understand how people organize and use 
their mind in the daily process of living. From a sociocultural 
stance, acquiring language amounts to more than just mastery 
of the linguistic properties of the L2. It involves the “dialectic 
interaction of two ways of creating meaning in the world” (p. 
110). The interaction between an expert (teacher) and novice 
(learner) in a problem-solving task (scaffolding) in which the 
expert’s role was to provide the novice with instructional sup-
port then became the model for communicative tasks in the 
foreign language classrooms. Based on Vygotsky’s concept of 
a Zone of Proximal Development (the distance between the ac-
tual developmental level and the level of potential develop-
ment), the expert’s and teacher’s role was to gain the learner’s 
interest in the task, simplify the task, keep the learner moti-
vated, point out important features, reduce anxiety and frus-
tration during problem solving, and model appropriate form. 
In accordance with the new responsibilities, the role of the 
classroom teacher shifted to that of an architect, creating mean-
ingful, interactive, and cooperative learning tasks designed to 
engage the learner actively in negotiating language meaning 
in authentic contexts that are co-constructed.
The focus on student language proficiency as measured 
through performance-based tasks made itself felt both in lan-
guage learning research and in teaching. Questions emerged 
regarding how language proficiency could be enhanced and 
how best to measure the level of language proficiency.
As the proficiency movement has gained momentum in 
the US and most recently in Europe, consensus was sought 
about describing and measuring language abilities. The devel-
opment of the Proficiency Guidelines by the American Council 
on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) defined what 
language users are able to do with language in speaking, lis-
tening, reading, and writing at various levels of performance. 
These Guidelines marked a major shift in language pedagogy 
from methodology to measurement and a focus on learner out-
comes. In 1996, content standards were published and subse-
quently revised (National Standards in Foreign Language Ed-
ucation Project, 1996, 2006, 2014) that delineated what learners 
should know and be able to do with language. The ACTFL 
Performance Guidelines for K-12 Learners (ACTFL, 2006) de-
scribed language performance within three modes of commu-
nication (interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational) to as-
sist teachers in understanding how well students demonstrate 
language ability at various points along the language-learning 
continuum. A similar effort by the International Association 
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s Language 
Education Study is seeking a comparison and evaluation of the 
outcomes of different educational systems across Europe. The 
Standards Movement, seeking to promote the establishment of 
guidelines for the teaching of foreign languages for all learn-
ers, indicates the growing concern with learner outcomes and 
accountability. In a standards-driven environment, the shift 
to student performance requires that teachers have a reper-
toire of approaches that target specific goal areas or standards.

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