Student Goals, Expectations, and the Standards for Foreign Language Learning

Magnan, Sally Sieloff; Murphy, Dianna; Sahakyan, Narek; Kim, Su Yeon

doi:10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01192.x

Cited by 35 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…To evaluate the importance that students placed on various types of learning goals, 29 questionnaire items asked students to rate on a scale from 0 to 100% how much they would like to achieve a given goal by the end of their language studies. Ten of these items were based on Magnan et al's () Standards survey (and because both Magnan et al and the present study were designed before the update to the Standards, these items were worded as shown in the National Standards, ). However, Standard 5.1 (“Learners use the language both within and beyond the classroom setting”) was not included because it addressed only indirectly one important aspect of Communities: membership in a TL community (Darhower, ; Magnan, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students' Perspectives on Communities‐Oriented Goals

White

2016

Foreign Language Annals

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Scholars and professional organizations have described participation in target language (TL) communities as one of the primary aims of language learning, but little work has been done to determine how students define those communities or envision their own involvement within them. This exploratory study drew on questionnaire and interview data to investigate the extent to which beginning‐level learners of German (n = 23) valued the goals that are outlined in the World‐Readiness Standards for Language Learning (National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015)—particularly the Communities‐oriented goals—and examined the ways in which these students delineated a TL community and conceived of participation in that community. Findings suggest that, relative to other goal areas, the items representing the Communities standard on the whole were rated as unimportant to these learners; however, there were some specific aspects of Communities that were rated much more favorably. Regardless of their alignment with those goals, learners' definition of what constituted a TL community focused on native speaker status and geographical location and excluded groups that met in local settings (e.g., German classes).

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students' Perspectives on Communities‐Oriented Goals

White

2016

Foreign Language Annals

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“…For sure, these students appear to understand well the link between communication and culture, but what they like most is not negotiating meanings and norms, but interacting orally with people and participating in new communities. “It seemed that these students were reducing all communication to the oral interaction they valued most” (Magnan et al, , p. 242).…”

Section: How Does Globalization Affect Fl Education In the United Stamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What if these skills of comparison, contrast, analysis, interpretation etc., do not correspond to what the students want from learning a foreign language? (Magnan et al, )…”

Section: What Does a Focus On Globalization Mean For The American Formentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Foreign Languages in an Era of Globalization: Introduction

Kramsch

2014

The Modern Language Journal

472

239

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Through its mobility of people and capital, its global technologies, and its global information networks, globalization has changed the conditions under which foreign languages (FLs) are taught, learned, and used. It has destabilized the codes, norms, and conventions that FL educators relied upon to help learners be successful users of the language once they had left their classrooms. These changes call for a more reflective, interpretive, historically grounded, and politically engaged pedagogy than was called for by the communicative language teaching of the eighties. This special issue will explore how we are to conceive of such a pedagogy.

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“…The value orientation to the teacher's role also involves a critical examination of instructional practices that may feed student motivations for the study of languages that are tied to mere profit or power (Smith & Carvill, ) rather than common good, social justice, or intercultural understanding, and of the uses of testing as tools for accelerating political agendas rather than students’ L2 development (Shohamy, ). Language teachers are constantly called upon to negotiate pedagogical choices that seek to develop students’ additional languages (L2s) for a variety of educational, social, heritage, identity, and instrumental purposes in a range of contexts, such as foreign or world language education (Magnan, Murphy, & Sahakyan, ; Tin, ; Zhu Hua & Li Wei, ), immersion education (Cammarata & Tedick, ; Swain, ), CLIL (Dafouz & Hibler, ), multilingual environments of mainstream schooling (Creese, ; Varghese, ) or heritage/complementary education (Creese, Blackledge, & Takhi, ) while striving to maintain their L1s for those same purposes and often despite prevalent language ideologies and policies. In these and many other areas across the theoretical and curricular spectra of language teaching research and practice, the role of the language teacher emerges as one filled with questions of what languages and language teachers are for, what purposes language education and language teacher education should serve in societies in which multilingualism and multiculturalism are the norm, and what implications such broader values and purposes have for the teacher's here‐and‐now encounter with his or her students; questions that go well beyond the narrow pedagogical concerns of language instruction in the classroom, but which exert powerful influence on them.…”

Section: New Challenges Perennial Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐Envisioning the Roles, Tasks, and Contributions of Language Teachers in the Multilingual Era of Language Education Research and Practice

Kubanyiova

Crookes

2016

The Modern Language Journal

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This article lays out the proposition that the rapid changes in 21st‐century society, in which multilingualism is the norm, have presented new challenges, questions, and resources with regard to the roles, tasks, and contributions of language teachers. In line with recent research developments and in keeping with tradition, we believe it helpful to think of language teachers’ broader identity role as that of moral agent. We examine implications that such a re‐envisioning has for the knowledge base of language teachers and for the purposes and practices of language teacher education and professional development. Drawing on research in language teacher education, language teacher cognition, second language acquisition, and applied linguistics more broadly, we highlight the need to go beyond traditional notions of teachers’ knowledge of language, language learning, and language learners. We also subject to critical scrutiny the notions of effective pedagogies and reflective practice as the desired outcomes of language teacher preparation and development. Instead, we introduce critical alternatives that offer creative possibilities for educating teachers able and willing to serve student populations with diverse language learning needs across interlinguistic, sociopolitical, and historical contexts of language teaching.

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Student Goals, Expectations, and the Standards for Foreign Language Learning

Cited by 35 publications

References 25 publications

Students' Perspectives on Communities‐Oriented Goals

Students' Perspectives on Communities‐Oriented Goals

Teaching Foreign Languages in an Era of Globalization: Introduction

Re‐Envisioning the Roles, Tasks, and Contributions of Language Teachers in the Multilingual Era of Language Education Research and Practice

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