What is Proficiency?

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Although proficiency constructs differ, proficiency, according to ACTFL, is defined as "...what individuals can do with language in terms of speaking, writing, listening, and reading in real-world situations in a spontaneous and non-rehearsed context...regardless of where, when, or how the language was acquired." Click here for additional documents or images:  One  |  Two   |   Three

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Create a Proficiency Goal (or Ask Your Program Administrator)

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**Request any proficiency benchmarks, descriptors, or placement test criteria for your course; your program administrator should be able to provide you these.**

 

If you do not have access to this information, check out ACTFL's Proficiency Guidelines and these Proficiency Level Descriptor Samples. When you are ready, create a brief, simplified statement, which we will refer to as a Proficiency Goal, that reflects what your students need to be able to do with their proficiency before they leave your class. This statement is a measurable task containing no descriptors and no course content. It should be reflective of the language skills emphasized in your class (i.e. speaking class = Speaking Proficiency Goal), and should align with the criteria that your placement test measures. For example, in a low intermediate class in which conversational proficiency is emphasized, the Proficiency Goal could be: 

 

"By the end of  this class, I will be able to frequently or always create discrete sentences, maintain a simple conversation, and ask and answer simple questions"

 

In this example, these three tasks (create discrete sentences, maintain a simple conversation, and ask/answer simple qusetions) are criteria that the OPI placement test measures. Click here for an example:  Example 1. Click here for another example:  Example 2.

 

Be sure to write your Proficiency Goal and Proficiency Rubric using Can-Do statements in the first person for students to better understand.

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If you teach an integrated skills course, you would have the option of the Proficiency Goal reflecting one or two emphasized skills (i.e. an beginning-level Spanish class may emphasize speaking and listening skills), or all four skills.

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Create a Proficiency Rubric

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**Request any proficiency rubrics for your course; your program administrator should be able to provide you these.**

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If not, build a 5-point Proficiency Rubric that breaks down this Proficiency Goal for students. A score of 1 is largely underdeveloped; a score of 2 is almost competent; a score of 3 means the student has minimally met competency; a score of 4 is very good; and a score of 5 is mastery level. This rubric is what you will use to score student proficiency during the course. Use the ProficiencyBuilder Generic Rubric Creator, the Multi-Criteria Rubric Creator, or the Proficiency Sample Rubrics for assistance. 

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If you have an actual sample of what proficiency levels should sound or look like by the time students leave your class, upload it to a Google Drive, DropBox, or other cloud-based storage that provides you a shareable link (you can insert this link inside your gradebook for students to access, a later step).

 

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