Seminar Theme

Proficiency

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines, first published in 1986, shifted the emphasis in language instructional goals from what learners know about language to what they can do with the language they have learned, and at the same time they established a common metric for measuring student performance. The Proficiency Guidelines describe student performance in listening, speaking, reading, and writing at the novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior levels. They were adapted from guidelines developed in U.S. government language schools and have made "proficiency-oriented instruction" a part of the vocabulary of every language teacher. The 1986 guidelines were subsequently reevaluated and revised, beginning with the 1999 document "ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines–Speaking" and with the 2001 document "Preliminary Proficiency Guidelines–Writing."