Language Acquisition, Instruction, and Assessment
Domain 5 tests second-language acquisition theory, instructional design, and assessment for French. You must connect research and standards to classroom decisions, interpret proficiency levels, and choose assessments that measure what learners can do.
Core rules and concepts
- Acquisition theory: Krashen's comprehensible input and affective filter; Swain's output hypothesis; Long's interaction hypothesis; Vygotsky's ZPD and scaffolding. These explain why learners need meaningful input, interaction, and feedback.
- Proficiency: ACTFL levels (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior) describe what learners can do with language; performance is task-specific. The three modes are interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational.
- Instruction: backward design starts from standards and assessments. The World-Readiness Standards' 5 Cs are Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. Tasks should be authentic and level-appropriate.
- Assessment: use integrated performance assessments (IPAs) with all three modes; rubrics should describe performance, not just count errors. Formative feedback can be recasts, clarification requests, or metalinguistic explanation.
Worked example
A food unit: students read an authentic menu (interpretive), role-play ordering in a restaurant (interpersonal), and create a blog post reviewing a dish (presentational). The teacher uses a rubric aligned to Intermediate proficiency and recasts errors during the role-play. Reasoning: each task matches a mode, the assessment is authentic, and feedback supports communication rather than only accuracy.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing proficiency with performance; overcorrecting every error; testing only grammar; omitting the interpretive mode; using rubrics that are not level-specific; treating culture as isolated facts rather than practices and perspectives.