Language Standards：An International Perspective，Part 1
What Do Standards Describe, and Why?
Language standards vary in what they describe, reflecting their purpose and the conceptual views of those who develop them. Most language standards describe what learners know and are able to do at various levels. However, how this knowledge and these skills are conceptualized may vary. For example, the Australian ESL bandscales and the Ontario curriculum address the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening separately whereas the U.S. ESL standards address them in an embedded, integrative fashion. The European framework focuses on the interaction of the receptive and interactive modes, particularly for speaking.
Language standards vary in what they describe, reflecting their purpose and the conceptual views of those who develop them.
The continuum of pedagogical and administrative purposes generates a range of other features. For example, standards developed for pedagogical purposes include information about process, that is, information for teachers on how to teach and how students learn, whereas administrative standards do not. Pedagogically based standards tend to be more detailed, whereas administrative standards tend to present concise and less pedagogically informative bullet points listing what students should be able to do. Although their formats are quite different, the U.S. ESL standards and the Australian ESL bandscales are detailed, classroom-embedded descriptions of ESL teaching and learning. The Ontario curriculum provides concise bullet-pointed outcomes- based statements of what students will do and learn in a given course to ensure that the content is taught and measured and standards achieved. The European framework provides concise, transparent “can do” statements to help learners understand and monitor their own progress. All writers of standards need to be concerned with the validity of what they describe; therefore, what they describe has to be open to scrutiny by teachers regarding how well it reflects their learners’ language development and their opportunities for learning. Teachers need to be constantly ready to question the way standards present the picture of what is to be learned and how learners progress
, and to understand that they as teachers play an essential role in recognizing the needs of individual learners and adding them to the broader picture of ESL and EFL growth provided in the standards.
《Language Standards：An International Perspective，Part 1》
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