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simply too gross to make the necessary distinctions at the program stages we
are seeking to define.
The second problem is, as noted above, the proficiency guidelines mea-
sure only procedural knowledge. While that fact coincides with the principles of
the LLF, it fails to account for an important aspect of acquisition that is extremely
relevant to the articulation problem. The path to acquiring procedural know-
ledge can be quite long and does not consist solely of subsets of procedural
knowledge. Rather, an important part of the process--especially as mastery of
a second language increases for a post-pubertal learner--concerns the integra-
tion of declarative knowledge (i.e., grammatical structure) into procedural abili-
ties. Thus, for learners to move effectively from one program to another, it is
also necessary for us to have a measure of their declarative knowledge. Even
though the emphasis at the elementary stage might be on procedural know-
ledge and functional abilities, we cannot ignore the status of their declarative
knowledge.
This problem can be restated in sharper terms by noting that proficiency
measurements, by definition based on performance, can only be said to
measure knowledge if one is a behaviorist. That is, such assessment
approaches fail to take into account the very real learning that goes on before
performance is possible. In the end, of course, we are primarily interested in
performance, but in a system of measurement that is as gross as the system of
stages we propose it is important not to make the mistake of assuming that the
path to a particular level of performance can only be defined by naming subsets
of lower-level performances. The underlying cognitive structures that will, at
some point, produce the performances that teachers in interested in promoting
need to be developed in a wide variety of ways, and our assessment processes
must try to tease out the status of these less tangible forms of knowledge.
Furthermore, even declarative knowledge is not fully acquired in discrete
chunks. Psychologists refer, for example, to the difference between recognition
and recall.29In defining stages it was useful to be able to distinguish among: no
knowledge of, e.g., a particular case form, the ability to recognize the form, and
the ability to produce the form in isolation--none of which represents true
functional ability.
In accord with both principles and practicality, what we have attempted to
do, therefore, is to calculate goals that we feel could be reached in challenging
college programs in one-year increments. Readers should bear in mind two
critical questions as they continue: 1)Do these goals for these stages make
sense as wholes, both within each stage and across stages? 2)Where does
my program fit in this metric? We envision that question 1 will be answered
democratically. We can set whatever goals the profession deems appropriate.
Question 2 will be answered statistically. If the majority--or at least some large
plurality--of programs do not fit or, more importantly, do not want to fit relatively
neatly into the stages as they are defined, then the articulation problem will
remain, because no one will know what to aim for.
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