Proficiency is an approach used in teaching a foreign language that aims to assist learners in developing their ability to perform in the learned language in ​all four skills:

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​      Reading

            Writing

​                  Listening

                        Speaking​

 

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The Proficiency Approach:

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Proficiency is an approach used in teaching a foreign language that aims to assist learners

in developing their ability to perform in the learned language in four skills: Reading,

Writing, Listening, and Speaking.

 

Why Proficiency?

 

It allows a flexible curriculum: The goal of the Proficiency Approach is to promote the

learners’ functional abilities to a fixed set of criteria. Therefore, it allows each teacher and

institution to select the most suitable material or teaching method that will maximize his or

her learners’ language acquisition process.

 

It helps articulate learning goals: By describing the nature of each level of performance

in each language skill, the guidelines provide us with the tools to create a path for our

learners to move from one stage to the next. The criteria used in the guidelines help

language educators create and articulate specific performance goals for their learners of all

language skills.

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It supports language acquisition: The Proficiency Approach is the most efficient

framework that allows the acquisition of a learned language in an academic setting in

which the contact hours are relatively limited. By adopting the notion of performance as

the core principle, the Proficiency Approach focuses on the learners’ abilities in the target

language by concentrating simply on what the learners know about the language. This

approach helps learners internalize the language.