American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
Language education organization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) is a language education organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. It is an individual membership organization and administrators from elementary through graduate education, as well as in government and industry.[1]
 | |
| Abbreviation | ACTFL |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1967 |
President | Milton Alan Turner |
| Website | www |
The organization was founded in 1967 as a small offshoot of the Modern Language Association (MLA). The organization has established proficiency guidelines, advocated for language education funding, and connected colleagues at the ACTFL Annual Convention.[2]
The Language Educator
The Language Educator (TLE) magazine is ACTFL's membership publication. TLE is published quarterly with issues available to members in print and for digital download and via a mobile app.[3]
ACTFL language proficiency guidelines
The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines provide a means of assessing the proficiency of a foreign language speaker. It is widely used in schools and universities in the United States.[4]
The guidelines are broken up into different proficiency levels:
- novice – subdivided into low (NL), mid (NM), and high (NH)
- intermediate – subdivided into low (IL), mid (IM), and high (IH)
- advanced – subdivided into low (AL), mid (AM), and high (AH)
- superior (S)
- distinguished (D)
These proficiency levels are defined separately for ability to listen, speak, read and write. Thus, in those American programs that emphasize written language over spoken, students may reach the advanced level in reading and writing while remaining at a lower level in listening and speaking.
The ACTFL Performance Descriptors are defined in three different subsets of communications skills with their own more generalized grading scales in terms of domains, functions, contexts/ content, text type, language control, vocabulary, communication strategies, cultural awareness in all of the following modes of communication:[5]
- Interpersonal (Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced)
- Interpretative (Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced)
- Presentational (Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced)