Proficiency Guidelines

The ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages) proficiency guidelines describe performance in listening, speaking, reading, and writing a given language. Each description is a sample of a particular range of ability, and each level subsumes all previous ones, from the most simple to the most complex. What follows is a very simplified version of these guidelines.

• Writing
  • Novice: Able to write simple, fixed expressions and limited memorized material. Can supply information on simple forms and documents. Can write names, numbers, dates, own nationality, and other simple autobiographical information, as well as some short phrases and simple lists.
  • Intermediate: Can write short, simple letters. Content involves personal preferences, daily routine, everyday events, and other topics grounded in personal experience.
  • Advanced: Able to write about a variety of topics with significant precision and in detail. Can write most social and informal business correspondence. Can describe and narrate personal experiences fully but has difficulty supporting points of view in written discourse. Can write about the concrete aspects of topics relating to particular interests and special fields of competence. Some misuse of vocabulary may still be evident. Style may still be obviously foreign.
  • Superior: Able to express self effectively in most formal and informal writing on practical, social and professional topics. Can write most types of correspondence, such as memos as well as social and business letters, and short research papers and statements of position in areas of special interest or in special fields. Errors in writing rarely disturb natives or cause miscommunication.