Teaching and Learning to the Highest Levels of Language Proficiency - Sharings from the Journal of Distinguished Language Proficiency and More (Franke on Speaking Proficiency)

 


  


Available for download, article from JDLS 8: "Road Maps to Distinguished Speaking Proficiency" (Dr. Jack Franke, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center)

Abstract:

Although study abroad is viewed in the United States as sine qua non, the study abroad experience is not a panacea to achieve distinguished foreign language speaking proficiency.  This study attempts to uncover how persistence, study abroad, motivation, and learner autonomy play into the pursuit of distinguished speaking proficiency.  Using the theoretical framework of complexity theory and phenomenological design, the study utilizes interviews of four educators at an institute in the western United States as the primary instrument of data collection.  This study investigates the roadmaps which successful foreign language educators have utilized to achieve distinguished speaking proficiency through interviews and documentary research. Data analysis of interviews with the participants reveals distinguished speaking proficiency was a highly personal pursuit, characterized by different motivations based on the choice of a foreign language, engagement in the target culture, grit, and time.  Overall, the participants were highly self-efficacious learners, many married to foreign-speaking spouses, who spent extended periods in the foreign culture and community.  The study provides possible roadmaps for students and for educators who wish to achieve near-native speaking proficiency in a foreign language.

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We now have available for individual purchase each of the feature articles from issue 8 of the journal at a very accessible price and will make the feature articles available from other issues as time goes on. Check our webstore to see what we have at any given time. We will announce and link each of these individually in upcoming blog posts.

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Also, don't believe Amazon's listing of previous issues of The Journal for Distinguished Language Studies as out of print. It is very much in print and available at the MSI Press webstore. Subscription service available as noted above, and issues 1-6 are on sale for $5 each!

Amazon is selling issues 7 and 8.

For more posts about the JDLS, click HERE.

If you have a post to contribute to the Thursday high-level-language-proficiency topic, we would love to see it. Please send it to editor@msipress.com.


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