“Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life."
Language proficiency or linguistic proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. As theories vary among pedagogues as to what constitutes proficiency,there is little consistency as to how different organizations classify it. Additionally, fluency and language competence are generally recognized as being related, but separate controversial subjects. In predominant frameworks in the United States, proficient speakers demonstrate both accuracy and fluency, and use a variety of discourse strategies. Thus, native speakers of a language can be fluent without being considered proficient.
The American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) distinguishes between proficiency and performance. In part, ACTFL's definition of proficiency is derived from mandates issued by the US government, declaring that a limited English proficient student is one who comes from a non-English background and "who has sufficient difficulty speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language and whose difficulties may deny such an individual the opportunity to learn successfully in classrooms where the language of instruction is English or to participate fully in our society."
ACTFL views "performance" as being the combined effect of all three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational.
Nationwide, the percentage of pupils mastering reading/writing increased from 59.0% in 1995 to 61.6% in 1998. Males and females had essentially the same rate of increase between 1995 and 1998), but the percentage of females (64.4% in 1995 and 66.9% in 1998) was greater than that of the males (53.4% in 1995 and 56.2% in 1998) during both years.
There was practically no improvement in the urban areas; in contrast, there was a significant improvement in the rural areas. In terms of the percentage of students mastering reading/writing, the urban areas nevertheless had an edge over the rural areas in 1995 (urban:64.2%; rural:51.7%) and in 1998 (urban:64.5%; rural:57.7%).
Females performed better than males in the urban areas in 1995; however, the situation was reversed in 1998 owing to the combination of the increase in the percentage of males and the big drop in the female percentage between the two years. Although males and females posted increases between 1995 and 1998, females maintained their edge over the males.
The poor and the affluent are not communicating because they do not have the same words. When we talk of the millions who are culturally deprived, we refer not to those who do not have access to good libraries and bookstores, or to museums and centers for the performing arts, but those deprived of the words with which everything else is built, the words that open doors. Children without words are licked before they start. The legion of the young wordless in urban and rural slums, eight to ten years old, do not know the meaning of hundreds of words which most middle-class people assume to be familiar to much younger children. Most of them have never seen their parents read a book or a magazine, or heard words used in other than rudimentary ways related to physical needs and functions. Thus is cultural fallout caused, the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty reinforced and perpetuated. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”
There was practically no improvement in the urban areas; in contrast, there was a significant improvement in the rural areas. In terms of the percentage of students mastering reading/writing, the urban areas nevertheless had an edge over the rural areas in 1995 (urban:64.2%; rural:51.7%) and in 1998 (urban:64.5%; rural:57.7%).
Females performed better than males in the urban areas in 1995; however, the situation was reversed in 1998 owing to the combination of the increase in the percentage of males and the big drop in the female percentage between the two years. Although males and females posted increases between 1995 and 1998, females maintained their edge over the males.
The poor and the affluent are not communicating because they do not have the same words. When we talk of the millions who are culturally deprived, we refer not to those who do not have access to good libraries and bookstores, or to museums and centers for the performing arts, but those deprived of the words with which everything else is built, the words that open doors. Children without words are licked before they start. The legion of the young wordless in urban and rural slums, eight to ten years old, do not know the meaning of hundreds of words which most middle-class people assume to be familiar to much younger children. Most of them have never seen their parents read a book or a magazine, or heard words used in other than rudimentary ways related to physical needs and functions. Thus is cultural fallout caused, the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty reinforced and perpetuated. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”
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