French foreign language skills’ assessment in Spanish pre-service teachers.

Abstract

The acquisition of foreign language (FL) skills by European citizens is essential, and the adequate training of FL teachers (FLT) emerges as a key factor for this objective. In this regard, having an excellent command of the target language is indeed one of the most important characteristics of outstanding FLT teachers, and teachers’ language proficiency has a direct impact on what takes place in the classroom. However, despite the recommendations described in the “European profile for language teacher education: a frame of reference”, explicit attention to language improvement is still lacking in most teacher training programs. Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of assessing the language skills of FLT. Some studies reported their concerns about the writing proficiency, in the target language, of pre-service FLT (P-FLT) and concluded that the acquisition of a near-native level in the target language by non-native P-FLT is a real challenge and it plays a key role in their professional development. This study aimed at assessing the language proficiency of French as a FL (FFL) of Spanish P-FLT enrolled in a Postgraduate Teacher Education Program. FFL level was assessed with a self-assessment test and ©DIALANG. Furthermore, their writing skills were quantitatively evaluated. Self-assessment of the FFL level (according to the CEFR) performed by each student ranged from B1 to C2. The analyses of ©DIALANG showed that 11.1% acquired a C1 level and 68.9% a B2 level. Moreover, writing skills analysis revealed a high occurrence of different kind of errors, mostly spelling errors (37%). These results demonstrated that the participants still encounter problems with the acquisition of a proficient user level (C1-C2), and specifically with writing skills. These findings should be of concern since these FFL skills gaps can affect the quality of their professional performance. More importantly, these results suggest that quality controls, to assess the progressive acquisition of FL level during university studies, are needed to ensure that FL professionals were able to acquire the aimed FL competences at the end of their studies. Finally, more research is still needed to determine these important aspects in other FL university programs.