Creating Speakers: 4) Assessments & Goals Owennatekha (Brian Maracle) A.N.L.R.I. Fairbanks May 21-24, 2018

Montreal * Six Nations * Detroit * Boston * New York *

3 out of 6 languages still spoken 13,000 people living on-reserve Six Nations 3 out of 6 languages still spoken 13,000 people living on-reserve 2 First-Language Mohawk speakers (2,000 speakers live in the East)

Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa (Our Language Society) 1999 Full-time adult immersion Two years long Prog. Co-ordinator Founded with wife Based on work of Kanatawakhon Create “fluent” speakers Like this one:

* Adult Immersion Program (Year 1 & Year 2) * On-Line Program * Youtube: onkwawenna kentyohkwa * web: www.onkwawenna.info

Four Presentations #1 Root-Word Method #2 Simple-to-Complex Curriculum #3 Teaching Method #4 Assessments & Goals

Assessments are not a white man’s thing.

Think “Proficiency,” Not “Fluency.”

The Oral Proficiency Interview is a valuable tool because it assesses: Students Instructors Programs

A..T.F.L. Proficiency Levels: Novice (Low, Mid, High) Intermediate (Low, Mid, High) Advanced (Low, Mid, High) Superior Distinguished

Novice Level Speakers * speak in memorized words and phrases * can not create language * can not sustain a conversation

Intermediate Level Speakers * speak in complete sentences * can create language * can sustain simple, basic conversations on personal matters

Advanced Level Speakers * speak in paragraphs of “interconnected discourse” * can make an argument and defend an opinion * can sustain in-depth conversations on a wide variety of subjects * has full control over grammar and rarely makes grammatical mistakes

A.C.T.F.L. classifies languages by how long it takes to learn them. Group 1 are the languages that are grammatically closest to English: French, Spanish, Italian A highly-motivated adult student can become an Advanced Level French speaker after 600 hours of instruction.

Annual Convention New Orleans Nov 16-18

Program Goals

1st Year Program Goal: Intermediate-Low 2nd Year Program Goal: Advanced-Low

If you have set your program goal, How long will it take to achieve it? If your program has a pre-determined length, What level of proficiency can your students achieve?

Group 1 Languages: Spanish, French, Swedish 600 hours - Advanced High Group 2 Languages: German, Greek, Hindi 1,320 hours - Advanced High/Superior Group 3 Languages: Russian, Thai, Turkish 1,320 hours - Advanced High Group 4 Languages: Japanese, Arabic, Korean 2,500 hours - Superior

Because there are so many levels (11), A.C.T.FL. assessments are more precise and useful than the European Framework of Reference for Languages (E.F.R.L.)

demo

Saving a Dying Language Isn’t Cheap We didn’t lost the language overnight and we won’t get it back overnight. It will be expensive. Saving a dying language isn’t cheap. We pay our students $10 an hr, up to $300 a week but that’s less than minimum wage. We have three and half teachers who are paid less than public schoolteachers. Our budget this year is about $360,000. We get no government funding. It all comes from the community – ½ from elected band council and one-half from the traditional chiefs. In our first five years we got the local native job training agency to fund us on the same basis as they funded people to go to welding school. Students received a training allowance and we were paid so many dollars per student per day, the same as a welding school.

2018-19 budget (if approved): $500,000 (No Government Funding) * 1st & 2nd Year Program * On-Line Program * Third-Year Planning Project (Gov’t.) * On-Line Transfer Project (Gov’t.) * Verb Generator Project with N.R.C. (Gov’t)

Staff and Students are paid

Owennatekha (Brian Maracle) owennatekha@gmail.com