MLO 1: Language Proficiency and Knowledge
The student sustains performance in speaking, listening, reading and writing at the Advanced level of language proficiency, as outlined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL):
- 1.1 Speaking ability: The student is able to satisfy the requirements of everyday situations and routine school and work requirements. Can communicate facts and talk casually about topics of current public and personal interest, using general vocabulary. The student can be understood without difficulty by native speakers.
- 1.2 Listening ability: The student is able to understand main ideas and most details of connected discourse on a variety of topics beyond the immediacy of the situation. Comprehension may be uneven due to a variety of linguistic factors and topics.
- 1.3 Reading ability: The student is able to read prose selections of several paragraphs in length, particularly if printed clearly and if prose is in familiar sentence patterns. Reader understands the main ideas and facts but may miss some details. At this level the student can read such texts as descriptions, narratives, short stories, news items and routine personal and business correspondence.
- 1.4 Writing ability: The student is able to write routine social correspondence and join sentences in simple discourse of at least several paragraphs in length on familiar topics, and is able to express him/herself simply with some circumlocution. Good control of the most frequently used syntactic structures, but makes frequent errors in producing complex sentences. Writing is understandable to natives not used to the writing of non-natives.
Major Learning Outcome 1: Language Proficiency and Knowledge will be successfully fulfilled through a completion of the Capstone course that I am currently enrolled in and will be assessed after completion of the course requirements. This Learning outcome measures the student’s ability to communicate proficiently in everyday situations, but also places an emphasis on professional communication. The Outcome also evaluates the student’s ability to properly understand the main ideas and concepts while listening in the target language. Reading and writing hold great value to this MLO, because they are forms of communications that allow students the ability to effectively communicate in a professional atmosphere. Through a completion of these four requirements students will have completed Major Learning Outcome 1 and have proven Language Proficiency and Knowledge in the desired target language. I believe that completion of this course not only requires an immersion of the student with the target language, but also requires a great effort made towards learning traditions and the meaning behind them. This Major Learning Outcome has been a point of emphasis and I believe that it has been fulfilled since day one. I feel this way because every course taught in Spanish taken has exposed students to the language and some of the history behind Spanish speaking countries. I believe that the courses taught in Spanish were particularly important to developing student’s comprehension of the language. The environment provided for students to immerse themselves in the language was one that welcomed input which allowed students to feel comfortable in the class discussion.