By Dámaris Mayans, PhD For many heritage speakers of Spanish—those who grew up hearing and speaking the language at home but received most of their formal education in English (Valdés, 2000) —reading and writing in Spanish can feel like uncharted territory. While oral fluency may come naturally, academic writing often does not. So, what happens […]
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Performance versus Proficiency As world language educators, we often talk about the distinction between performance and proficiency. Most of us can explain that the former is language that focuses on familiar contexts and has been practiced, whereas the latter is overarching, encompassing authentic tasks in a real-world context. A simple way of conceptualizing this distinction […]
Continue readingIn this month’s “Language Proficiency Is Your Superpower” feature, we spotlight Jeff Page, a bilingual professional, a K12 paraprofessional, English-Spanish interpreter, and a tennis coach. Jeff recognizes the power of multilingualism and dedicates himself to supporting multilingual students and their parents in his school district. Jeff also also produces an audiobook narration podcast called “English […]
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