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The puzzle of the articulation problem led to the hypothesis that one
solution lay in carefully defining the first two stages of learning. These stages
need to be defined as cardinal points along the acquisition path that are widely
enough shared among learners and programs to be useful as junctures for
transition from one program to another. The stages can be seen as units of
measurement that will provide programs in both high schools and colleges with
targets at which to aim the levels of their programs.
A significant difficulty here lies in developmental differences between
high school and college students. We believe that we have hit upon an
approach that makes good cognitive sense for both high school and college
programs and is, simultaneously, sufficiently pragmatic so as to be quite
workable. The approach of the RLLF hinges on in a shift in orientation between
elementary and intermediate stages. The elementary stage--which, for
resource reasons, we would like to see handled to an ever greater extent prior
to college--focuses on procedural knowledge, "doing" knowledge. This
approach allots more time in the curriculum precisely to the type of knowledge
which is more difficult to acquire. As students move into the intermediate stage,
they would be expected to continue to develop their procedural knowledge and
also to develop more explicit structural knowledge and with it, analytic ability.
The increasing orientation to structural knowledge (with function still the
organizing principle) matches the maturation process that learners follow
through adolescence. Furthermore, it also facilitates addressing the second of
our practical needs by making it possible gradually to shift the locus of learning
management onto the learner. If we want learners to be able to go to Russia
after completing the third stage, they must be prepared not only for a new
program, but for learning in an entirely different culture. In order for this to be
effective, learners need to have been given the tools to do all of the things
necessary to manage their own learning, from setting goals and assessing
progress to understanding their own repertoire of optimal learning strategies.
To make it possible to implement such a framework, it was necessary to
develop a system of measurement of language knowledge in order to describe
approximately what it is that learners should know at the completion of the
various stages. No single form of measurement exists that captures the various
types of knowledge that we believe should characterize these stages. We
propose three general domains in which to try to describe the knowledge of
language learners: 1) skill levels and functional abilities; 2) lexical goals and
topical knowledge; and 3) structural knowledge. These domains will be
described in substantial detail below.
The Russian Language Learning Framework, then, is comprised of three
stages, each of which is defined with respect to progress within three domains
of language knowledge. Schools and colleges are free to examine their
resources, goals, and overall curriculum and to choose to integrate the levels of
their curriculum with these stages in the ways that best suit their institution's
situation. The orientation of the framework is functional, but over the course of
the three stages, there is a gradual increase in attention to analytic knowledge
that is consistent with adolescent learners development and which facilitates a
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