ACTFL Oral Proficiency Guidelines

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines C Speaking (1986) have gained widespread application as a metric against which to measure learners functional competency; that is, their ability to accomplish linguistic tasks representing a variety of levels. It was based on years of experience with oral testing in governmental institutions. We find it is a useful tool in the medical interpreting field when assessing interpreter and provider proficiency levels.

ACTFL Written Proficiency Guidelines

Please see text on Oral Guidelines above. This revision of the Writing Guidelines follows the precedent set in the revised guidelines for speaking C they are presented in a top-down fashion (from Superior to Novice) rather than in a bottom-up order, thereby allowing for more positive descriptive statements for each level and sublevel, stressing what language users can do with the language rather than what they cannot do. This top-down ordering also manifests more clearly the close link between a specific proficiency level and the next lower level by focusing on a narrower sphere of performance rather than by regarding the expansion of functional tasks and expectations as leaps as one moves up the proficiency scale. These guidelines are useful for assessing the proficiency level required to enter the medical translation field.

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ILR Oral Proficiency Levels
Interagency Language Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptions - Speaking
A skill level is assigned to a person through an authorized language examination. Examiners assign a level on a variety of performance criteria exemplified in the descriptive statements. Therefore, the examples given here illustrate, but do not exhaustively describe, either the skills a person may possess or situations in which he/she may function effectively. Statements describing accuracy refer to typical stages in the development of competence in the most commonly taught languages in formal training programs. In other languages, emerging competence parallels these characterizations, but often with different details. Unless otherwise specified, the term "native speaker" refers to native speakers of a standard dialect. "Well-educated," in the context of these proficiency descriptions, does not necessarily imply formal higher education; however, in cultures where formal higher education is common, the language-use abilities of persons who have had such education is considered the standard. That is, such a person meets contemporary expectations for the formal, careful style of the language, as well as a range of less formal varieties of the language.
http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale2.htm

ILR Skill Level Descriptions For Interpretation Performance
http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILR%20Interpretation%20Preformance%20Aug07.htm
 

Additional Documents

>Relationship of ILR to ACTFL Scale

>Commercial Price List (ACTFL Ratings)