I Love My Job Again!

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Cardinal Editor

Proficiency Over Grammar in the World Language Classroom

Megan Robinson, Spanish Teacher, Bloom-Carroll High School

I’m not sure what to call it. An epiphany seems like an understatement. It also feels too self-absorbed. I arrived at this point because of so many incredible teachers and researchers, including OWLA’s very own Alexis Blum, whose workshop I recently attended. What she taught gave me a reinvigorated passion for what we do as language teachers. I can promise you this because I’m up writing this and thinking about grammar at 1:30 in the morning on SPRING BREAK while my 3-month-old sleeps in his crib beside me. This stuff is THAT exciting. 

If you’re like me and you love Spanish but seem to constantly be fighting for your field to matter, listen up. Nothing makes me feel more worthless than hearing people say things like, “I took 3 years of Spanish and can only say equipaje”, but there’s a different way to do things: a communicative approach that develops student proficiency rather than the grammar method that I learned Spanish with. 

Here’s an accumulation of ideas that sold me: 

  • A small number of my Spanish 1 students will go to the next level. After that, even fewer students will continue to Spanish 3. Still fewer students will continue in college or use the language in another country. Even people who minor in a language, like several of my friends, still don’t take opportunities to use what they’ve learned. Even fewer of those people who earn college degrees will go on to be Spanish teachers and need the level of detailed grammar knowledge we have. So SOMETHING is incredibly wrong here… why on earth do we teach every kid like they are future Spanish teachers?
  • What they are more likely to get out of class is culture. And it shouldn’t just be every Friday. 
  • If our assessments are fill-in-the-blank to show students know how to conjugate a verb, they can get a 100% on that test without ever knowing the meaning of the sentences they are creating. Isn’t making meaning and understanding language the whole point?
  • We tell the kids their Spanish brains are like those of first graders. Yet we would never correct a first grader the way we correct our novices. We deduct points for misspellings and missing accent marks instead. We recast when they use the wrong article (el, la, los, or las), which does nothing for their language acquisition and only makes them put up their guard.
  • Masculine vs. Feminine: I don’t know about you, but I teach a whole unit about this when we learn classroom objects at the beginning of the year. But why do we prioritize it in level one when it’s not essential for communication, and the kids still mess it up? Heck,  I still mess it up after 15 years of studying Spanish! If students are truly challenging themselves to learn and practice, those are mistakes they should be making!
  • Preterite vs. Imperfect: Again, why harp on it when half the time it could go either way and the message is still communicated regardless? 
  • The same could be said for por vs. para. Entire units and assessments are wasted on these concepts that don’t convey meaning. 
  • Ser vs. Estar: The list goes on and on. 
  • A teacher friend of mine and I were teaching her sister Spanish for fun. We said, “poner” means to put, and “pongo” is a form of that verb. The sister, a very intelligent, college-educated adult, says, “But pongo sounds nothing like the first word you said!” This is how our students feel! As Alexis Blum put it, a student looks at the word “habla” and says, “What do you mean it’s an AR verb? It doesn’t even have an R!”
  • We shelter grammar that students need to communicate. I wouldn’t dare even utter a past-tense word in level one… but why not? In the real world, people don’t learn tenses in order, all of the present first and then on to the next. They just learn what they need. So why would I wait to teach students “quiero” until we cover stem-changing verbs? 

To me, this perspective shift is revolutionary, and I can’t wait to get more teachers on board. The hardest part is that some of us are fighting this battle alone. We try our hardest to create meaningful language experiences, only for our students to move on to another classroom where teaching about the language precedes teaching the language. I’ll see a prior student in the hallway, and I’ll greet them with “¿Cómo estás?” They give me a deer-in-headlights look because they don’t know what I’m saying or how to respond. Speaking in Spanish spontaneously is so unnatural for them, despite spending 3.5 hours in language class per week. We desperately need to answer this wake-up call, so let’s stick together and make it happen. 

Our kids crave connection and communication. So let’s give it to them with authentic contexts and resources. Alexis shared that she once had a student email her at 3 am and say, “What’s the name of that song from Argentina we learned in class? I’ve been looking for hours.” That’s the kind of learning experience we’re looking for. That’s what students will remember. Not verb charts. 

Here are some resources for diving in: 

So where do we go from here? Out with the old, in with the new. It seems like fill-in-the-blanks and vocab lists are no-nos with this new approach. So I’m curious, what do you replace them with? What old methods have you ditched for more CI, target language, and communication-based language learning?

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