Today I submitted my comments for the draft of the new World Languages Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve.
The State of California is updating its World Languages Standards. The current standards were adopted in 2009, so this is a fairly quick update – especially given the fact that there were no standards until 2009. There was a Framework, but no standards.
Overall, the standards are pretty good. There are some problems with the manuscript that should be cleared up through a thorough proofreading and editing process, but that is form, not content.
One of my primary objections in the section on Communication Standards was the emphasis on “authentic texts” and “authentic materials” to the exclusion of anything else. This objection was intensified by the definition of “authentic materials” in the Draft Glossary:
authentic materials– Materials created by native speakers for native speakers of the target language and cultures [lines 1128-1129]
My two immediate objections are as follows:
- This definition excludes anyone and everyone who has produced anything in a language other than their native one. That means that Eva Hoffman (“Lost in Translation”), Yann Martel (“Life of Pi”), and Vladimir Nabokov (“Lolita”) never produced authentic materials in English. Samuel Beckett (“En attendant Godot” – “Waiting for Godot”) never produced authentic materials in French, despite winning a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. (The prize included his French writings.) I hope we can all agree that this is absurd.
- A language learner can never have an authentic conversation in the target language because, as a learner, he or she is not a native speaker. Once again, this is absurd.
I was surprised to see this definition because the profession has attempted in recent years to get around its limitations by substituting “native speaker” with “member of the language and culture community”. While that may resolve the issue in number 1 above, it does nothing for the problem in number 2. Learners at the Novice and Intermediate levels are not, and cannot be, “members of the language and culture community”. Do we then discount classroom conversations, which can be quite effective vehicles for language acquisition, because they are not “authentic”?
μὴ γένοιτο! (God forbid; may it never be.)
We need to change our understanding of the word “authentic” as it applies to teaching and acquiring languages.
We also need to stop confusing the end with the means.
We need to take the research seriously and start giving our students the data they need to acquire a language, i.e., target language that they can understand and find interesting, if not compelling.
Okay, that’s it for today. Rant over.
For anyone who is interested in the California World Language Standards, you can download the draft here.