ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) is an organization aiming to improve and expand the teaching and learning of all languages at all levels of instruction. ACTFL is an individual membership organization of more than 13,000 language educators and administrators from elementary through graduate education, as well as in government and industry.[1]
Founded in 1967 as a small offshoot of the Modern Language Association (MLA), ACTFL quickly became both a resource and a haven for language educators. Since then, the organization has set industry standards, established proficiency guidelines, advocated for language education funding, and connected colleagues at the ACTFL Annual Convention.[2]
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[3] and the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview is the most widely used oral proficiency test in North America.[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)
Each year the organization names the ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year. The Teacher of the Year becomes a spokesperson for the language profession to increase the visibility of the importance of learning languages and cultures to the general public.[9]
2024: Alicia Dallman Shoemaker, Elkhorn Public Schools, Elkhorn, NE[10]
2023: William Lee, Tom C. Clark High School, San Antonio, TX[11]
2022: Heather Sweetser, University of New Mexico, NM[12]
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.[18]
