My 3rd Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016

Taken from http://www.relacionesculturales.edu.mx/abla-2016/

My 3 rd 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” [ CITATION Esc16 \l 5130 ]. 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 [ CITATION Wrind \l 1033 ], 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 managed 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.

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 meaninful 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-Guidedlearning-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 Leรณn, 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 Leรณn, 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