My 3rd
Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016:
“English Proficiency and the Common European
Framework”
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Post 287
“English has grown so much in recent
decades that it is commonly used among millions of people who did not learn it
as their first language” (Escobar, 2016) . And because of this amount of
non-native speakers, the Common European Framework of Reference (commonly known
as CEF) was born in November 2001 to deal with what learners were really able
to do along their contrasting developmental phases. Still educative
institutions, such as language centers or schools, have not been able to
comprehend the real scope of what the CEF is meant in terms of learner language
development. Is CEF still unclear for ELT professionals and for academic
decision-makers?
Escobar (2016), during the ABLA 2016
convention in Houston, posits the issue concerning the misinterpretation of the
CEF by asking the following: “Is the concept of a ‘native speaker’ still useful
in light of the transformations that English has experienced in its expansion?”
Based on my experience with curriculum development and instructional design,
publishers’ statements regarding their English language series in which a
student can cover a book of theirs in 90-120 hrs of instruction is a
teaching/learning fallacy. It has been roughly claimed by CEF standards
developers that to move from one level to another, some 200 hrs of instruction
are needed. And then what it is also misinterpreted by professionals is that A1
means someone who has never studied English in his/her life. But the fact that
a good amount of student inter-language is needed to achieve an A1 CEF level.
Based
on the British Council (Wright, M., n.d.) , an A1 – breakthrough or beginner can
be described as someone who …
· Can
understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases
aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type,
·
Can
introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about
personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and
things he/she has, and
· Can interact
in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is
prepared to help.
But, could an A1 really do this in less than 200 hrs of
instructor-led work in class? And by paying attention to Desveaux (2016) in the Cambridge English Support Site
(see chart below), it looks like a learner in a CEF Level A2 has already
undergone a minimum of 180 hrs. But what about an A1? Did this learner manage to complete his/her learning, the one stated by the British Council, in just 20
hrs of class instruction? These numbers do need revision since we language
teachers know that these hours become volatile and fallacious when we listen to
our students trying to communicate in the target language.
Click picture to make it larger.
Another
issue that is nebulous when one is trying to “digest” it is whether online
hours do count or not. When I asked Escobar during his talk at the ABLA 2016
convention, he insisted that these hours
count as long as they are instructor-led. Basically, these hours on an
online platform in a hybrid or blended learning format can be taken as part of
the hours needed to complete a CEF level. As Dr. Glick (2016) also stated in his ABLA 2016 presentation while explaining this
case study in a Mexican university, online/blended hours have a positive impact
on language learning. And though all this sounds wonderful, do these online
hours count when they are not “exactly” guided by the instructor and a platform
is just used as an online workbook? And how much do these rather “unguided
hours” impact language performance? Up to this point, this is unquantifiable!
Perhaps as my curriculum partner, Luis Quesada (from CCCN in Costa Rica),
suggests, we should divide these hours into two since he believes that these
hours may have some positive impact in the development of student English
interlanguage.
Federico Escobar,
College Board, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA
At this point of the discussion, I want to go back to one of
the most striking ideas presented by Escobar in his talk, “How should we
measure the effective use of English as a lingua franca?” (2016). Escobar is
giving a different direction in the real understanding of language performance
of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) since CEF descriptors only refer to what a
learner is able to do in the various levels the scale has and not what native
speakers are meant to do depending on their use of their first language. By
bumping into this misinterpretation “lump,” CEF does not need to be re-defined
but correctly understood. Descriptors are clear enough to have us comprehend
that learners today are using English as a lingua franca due to their
interactions with other non-native speakers of the target language. English is
not being learned to talk to native speakers but to improve the learner’s
chances of being employed. To sum up, CEF is not about native-like language use
and performance, it is about, as Escobar (2016) explained in his talk, the
interlanguage students develop along the many phases the CEF encases in its
scale and how it is used to interact with other EFL speakers.
Some other
additional reflections Escobar’s talk triggered in my mind after the ABLA
convention are connected to the way we run language programs in our binational
centers. Courses cannot be created around publishers’ statements of their
language series since they are not down to earth in the projection of hours
needed to climb the CEF scale ladder. A student cannot move up in the CEF scale
in 90 to 120 hours; more hours of instructor-led time are needed to develop a
given level. As explained by Escobar (2016), this is the reason why the CEF now
includes A1 and A1+, A2 and A2+, and so on, because in ELF learner language
development cannot be encased in hours but on what students can do based on the
CEF descriptors of language mastery. It is for this reason that the binational
centers’ roles, as well as the one by any serious
language school, is to educate their teachers to administrate this tool
correctly and to not expect native-like language production from their
students. Additionally, language centers need to instruct their learners that
they are not meant to expect to speak like a native speaker when speaking but
to anticipate some native-like production from time to time. Most of the time
the what it is going to be witnessed by the instructor is the development and
polishing of student ELF interlanguage.
Finally,
online work in blended or hybrid formats do count if these hours are truly
guided by the instructor. Online work per
se cannot be quantified as part of instructor-led hours spent by a sudent
on the school platform, or language series platform. A platform is not supposed
to be used by the teachers as an online workbook; it needs to be connected to
the course continuum to become meaningful for the student (inter) language
development.
References
Desveaux, S.
(2016, August 5). Guided learning hours. Retrieved from Cambridge
English Support Site:
https://support.cambridgeenglish.org/hc/en-gb/articles/202838506-Guided-learning-hours
Escobar, F. (16-19 de August de 2016).
English
Proficiency and the Common European Framework. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program . Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Insituto Mexicano
Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.
Glick, D. (2016, August 16-19). Maximizing Learning Outcomes
through Blended Learning: What Research Shows. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program . Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano
Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.
Wright, M. (n.d.). Our levels and the CEFR.
Retrieved from British Council Portugal:
https://www.britishcouncil.pt/en/our-levels-and-cefr
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
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