Background Characteristics and Oral Proficiency Development Over Time in Lower-Division College Foreign Language Programs Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractAnswering calls to map collegelevel proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) andlongitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lowerdivision college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of their programs), using the Oral Proficiency Interviewcomputer (OPIc). We recorded students gender, heritagelearner status, high school language experience, interest in learning the target language, perceived importance of speaking, and outsideofclass second language (L2) contact, in order to differentiategrowth. Latent growth curve analyses showed that learners oral proficiency progressed at an average rate of one sublevel per year on the scale of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (2012), following a nonlinear developmental path that was mildly accelerating over time.Students proficiency development had a significant relationship with the language being learned, heritagelearner status, high school language experience, interest in learning, and perceived importance of speaking. No unique effects were found for gender or outofclass L2 contact.

published proceedings

  • LANGUAGE LEARNING

altmetric score

  • 3.95

author list (cited authors)

  • Zhang, X., Winke, P., & Clark, S.

citation count

  • 7

complete list of authors

  • Zhang, Xiaowan||Winke, Paula||Clark, Shaunna

publication date

  • September 2020

publisher