The Standards Connection - A National Perspective

Are There Other Guidelines That Will Help Me Plan for And Assess My Students?

1) The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Writing, Revised 2001
While the ACTFL K-12 Performance Guidelines were designed to measure language learning acquired in a K-12 classroom setting, the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Writing are more general and may be applied to learning acquired in any number of settings.  

There are several important characteristics of the writing guidelines:
• They are designed to describe what the learner can do rather than what the learn can not do.
• They refer to both spontaneous and reflective writing. Although spontaneous writing allows the learner no time to reflect or revise whereas reflective writing allows such time, both types of writing can be evaluated using these guidelines. It is not the type of writing but rather the product that is evaluated.
• The writing guidelines describe learners in the following levels:
    Superior / Advanced-High / Advanced-Mid / Advanced-Low / Intermediate-High /  Intermediate-Mid /      Intermediate-Low  /  Novice-High /  Novice-Mid  /  Novice-Low

The following chart is taken from the ACTFL web site and is a highly abbreviated representation of the entire document. For the full descriptions, contact ACTFL.

Characteristics of learners at specific level of writing:

Superior

Superior-level writers are characterized by the ability to:

• express themselves effectively in most informal and formal writing on practical, social, and professional topics treated both abstractly as well as concretely
• present well developed ideas, opinions, arguments and hypotheses through extended discourse.
• control structures, both general and specialized/professional vocabulary, spelling or symbol production, punctuation, diacritical marks, cohesive devices and other aspects of written form and organization with no pattern of error to distract the reader.

Advanced

Advanced-level writers are characterized by the ability to:

• write routine informal and some formal correspondence, narratives, descriptions and summaries of a factual nature
• narrate and describe in major time frames, using paraphrase and elaboration to provide clarity in connected discourse of paragraph length
• express meaning that is comprehensible to those unaccustomed to the writing of non-narratives primarily through generic vocabulary, with good control of the most frequently used structures.

Intermediate

Intermediate-level writers are characterized by the ability to:

• meet practical writing needs - e.g. simple messages and letters, requests for information, notes- and ask and respond to questions
• create with the language and communicate simple facts and ideas in a loosely connected series of sentences on topics of personal interest and social needs, primarily in the present
• express meaning through vocabulary and basic structures that is comprehensible to those accustomed to the writing of non-narratives.

Novice

Novice-level writers are characterized by the ability to:

• produce lists and notes limited formulaic information on simple forms and documents
• recombine practiced material, supplying isolated words or phrases to convey simple messages, transcribe familiar words or phrases, copy letters of the alphabet, or syllables or reproduce basic characters with some accuracy
• communicate basic information.

2) ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines - Speaking (Revised 1999) describe spoken language proficiency. This revision updates the original ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986), introducing the addition of Advanced Low and Advanced Mid sublevels. 

Teachers of very accomplished K-12 students completing an extended sequence of language study may wish to consult these guidelines. In general, however, very few K-12 students surpass the Pre-advanced level.

3) Other Resources from the Center for Applied Linguistics

Less Commonly Taught Languages This new Resource Guide lists publications, institutes and programs, Web sites, and listservs related to the teaching and learning of less commonly taught languages.

Teaching Language Through Content This online guide includes links to Web sites, online lesson resources, instructional materials, ERIC Digests, books, journals, email discussion groups, and sample citations from the ERIC database related to content-based language instruction. The resources included in this guide are relevant to ESL/EFL teachers, foreign language teachers, and other educators who are interested in integrating language and content instruction.

Lessons Learned: Model Early Foreign Language Programs by Douglas F. Gilzow and Lucinda E. Branaman is the first volume in the new Professional Practice Series. This book describes seven successful foreign language programs for students in Grades K-8 in Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon.

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