Telling a Good Story: Proficiency-Based Teaching, Advanced-Level Literary Discussions, and Social Justice

Abstract

Scholars in our profession have long called attention to the gap between language classes and upper-level content courses. Some current trends, such as decolonizing the curriculum and using the lens of social justice, are highlighting an additional gap, which they perceive in students' preparedness to deal justly with an unjust world. This article examines some representative publications of these trends and shows how their shift away from a focus on target language learning may, in fact, exacerbate both gaps. Because they advocate restructuring world language curricula around something other than the target language and culture, these trends may distract teacher-scholars from proven approaches – a distraction which can, in turn, hinder students from reaching Advanced or Superior levels (ACTFL, 2012). In contrast, this article argues that using the ACTFL Guidelines and proficiency-based teaching are most useful to support students in learning to tell “good” stories, which empowers them to reach Advanced and Superior proficiency. A student-centered, proficiency-based approach helps teacher-scholars bridge the gap between language and content courses as well as between individual students' proficiency in upper-level classes. This article's last section provides detailed examples of multilevel tasks for common texts read in a literature class created for a wide range of proficiency levels.