To better "internationalize" their curriculum, community colleges should: (1) require one academic year of foreign language study; (2) design foreign language curriculum to develop students' functional language proficiency; (3) develop language courses to serve the community's and students' unique foreign language needs and interests; and (4)…

Ten guidelines, along with corresponding teaching techniques and learning activities, are offered for developing students' communicative proficiency as described in the "ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines." The objective is to improve students' Spanish and Portuguese communication ability in authentic, situational contexts. (16 references) (LB)

Prochievement tests, hybrids of proficiency and achievement tests, assess students' linguistic and communicative competence and provide a means for formative evaluation of student progress. Assessing Spanish listening comprehension/speaking proficiency, creating listening/oral proficiency test formats, and scoring are described. Guidelines for…

Discusses the need for second-language students to be given opportunities to use the foreign language in settings that closely approximate actual communicative situations and offers ideas on how teachers can provide such opportunities. (one reference) (GLR)