Sometimes test scores don’t reveal a steady, predictable upward trajectory in learning. This can be disappointing for learners and can leave teachers wondering what “went wrong.” One teacher in New York commented, “How can I have students who scored lower than last year after having this full year of instruction and practice? It doesn’t make sense!”
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U-Shaped Behavior
Scores that seem to regress or go down from one testing period to another are not particularly uncommon. In fact, it’s completely normal to see language increase or decrease slightly from year to year despite practicing and having more exposure to the language. In second language acquisition, this phenomenon is referred to as a U-shaped behavior or the U-shaped course of development (Ellis, 1997).
Essentially, you may see a learner’s proficiency drop off temporarily but then return to their prior level. The literature explains this behavior as “reorganization of prior knowledge” – in other words, this is a stage where learners are attempting to practice or interpret a new linguistic form – they’re perhaps analyzing, listening, or applying language in new ways, maybe overthinking certain things they thought they ‘knew’ in the language.
Teachers may have thought learners had already mastered that form, for instance. But while students practice using it in new or more developed ways (whether in speaking, listening, reading or writing), it may look like they don’t have mastery of the form after all. This actually reflects growth of mastery: learning to identify, interpret, or use the form in broader, more developed, or more advanced contexts and ways.
According to Ellis, “It is clear that this occurs because learners reorganize their existing knowledge to accommodate new knowledge” (23). This reorganization is also sometimes called restructuring (Young 9; Shirai 8). When learners appear to regress while learning about and attempting to practice a new linguistic form, they are progressing, even if they initially seemed to have “acquired” the form (Ellis 23).
Developing Proficiency Is Rarely Linear
Additionally, the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines – 2024 provide insight into the nature of developing language proficiency (emphasis added):
“The Guidelines characterize the development of language proficiency as a continuum with five major levels. Each level represents a range of ability (what an individual can do with language) that includes all of the prior levels. The primary distinction between levels is the functions and tasks (F) that an individual at that level can accomplish. With effort and exposure to the language over time, an individual develops the degree of accuracy (A) and control of context and content (C) and text type (T) that are required to accomplish increasingly complex functions and tasks.
The sublevels indicate how well the individual meets the criteria for the major level, and how close the individual’s proficiency is to sustaining the criteria for the next major level. This subdivision thus reflects the fact that over time and with practice an individual’s proficiency takes on the characteristics of the next higher level” (ACTFL, 2024).
As development of language skills doesn’t always track in an “upward” and linear fashion, sometimes test scores don’t change from one year to the next or even regress from year to year. This, too, is not an uncommon pattern.
Look at the Big Picture
Remember, however, when looking at scores to evaluate what’s going on both with individual students as well as with your classes as a whole. Sometimes one or two learners may have declining or unchanged scores, but the average across your class or the school may be different. With AAPPL reporting tools, you can look at scores from year to year. For example, you might look at scores overall from last year’s 9th graders to this year’s 10th graders. Assuming this is largely the same group of students from one year to the next, you can get a sense of whether scores are increasing, decreasing, or staying the same. Looking at average scores in 2022 for 9th graders to average scores in 2023 for 10th graders (assuming the same group of students continued in the language program) can give you a picture of how your school’s average scores relate across years and to national averages (see examples below). While some specific learners’ scores may not have changed from one year to the next, looking at overall averages just might give a different picture.
References
ACTFL. (2024). ACTFL proficiency guidelines 2024. Alexandria, VA: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Retrieved from https://www.actfl.org/uploads/files/general/Resources-Publications/ACTFL_Proficiency_Guidelines_2024.pdf
Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, 1997.
Shirai, Yaauhiro. “U-shaped Behavior in L2 Acquisition.” Burmeister, H. y Rounds, LP (eds.) (1990).
Young, Richard. “Discontinuous interlanguage development and its implications for oral proficiency rating scales.” Applied Language Learning 6 (1995): 13-26.
