Assessing Spanish Proficiency with Stories - Paperback

by Eric Herman (Author)

2 books in 1: Assessing Proficiency in the Classroom + Speed Readings for Spanish Learners. The proficiency guide presents the terminology of communicative language teaching and testing, including a critical review of the proficiency guidelines from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Improved testing methods and practical tasks are recommended. In addition, there are thirty 400-word stories (which get progressively harder) written within the highest frequency 300 words of the language. Each story has a 10-question multiple-choice quiz. One potential use of the stories and quizzes is to test fluency, as well as to develop fluency in a reading fluency course. The researched benefits of such a course are reviewed. This book is intended to support teachers of a story-based approach to test how they teach, and can help any communicative language teacher to use stories as the basis of a variety of communicative tasks.

Author Biography

Eric Herman is a communicative and comprehension-based language teacher and second language acquisition enthusiast. He loves helping teachers to learn a scientifically-supported approach to developing proficiency. Eric is constantly trying to improve his own instruction and innovate better ways to engage students and facilitate language acquisition in the classroom. Eric acquired Spanish while in the Peace Corps in Honduras. He served as a Youth Development Volunteer in the town of his wife-to-be. He is the author of How to use MovieTalk to Teach with Comprehensible Input (IJFLT, 2014), Ataques de Hambre (2016), and the bi-weekly Acquisition Classroom Memo.