Proficiency Goals at FR

 

 

At the Franklin Regional School District, we believe that students who study a second language should be able to communicate effectively in that language by reaching an attainable level of proficiency as determined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language’s (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines. These guidelines are a description of 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. For each skill, these guidelines identify five major levels of proficiency: Distinguished, Superior, Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice. For language study at the secondary level, only the levels of Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice are pertinent. 

The major levels of Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice are further divided into -high, -mid, and -low sub-levels. The levels of the ACTFL Guidelines describe the continuum of proficiency from that of the highly articulate, well-educated language user to a level of little or no functional ability. At Franklin Regional School District, students who successfully take all five levels of language study will be able to communicate at a minimum level of Intermediate-mid. This benchmark was chosen based on the amount of time that students will be exposed to the language, starting their studies in our exploratory program at the 6th grade level. As students complete the exploratory program during their 6th, 7th, and 8th grade school years, they have the opportunity to continue with level 2 at the high school. Beginning at level 2 during a student's freshman year affords the opportunity for up to a level 5 of language study. 

In addition to one’s communicative ability in the language, we strongly believe that culture is an integral component to language study and must not be taught in isolation of the language. For this reason, students acquire the language and the culture simultaneously as they engage in meaningful curricular units designed to enhance their language proficiency while learning about the target culture and their own culture. In other words, the importance of the students’ native culture will be connected to our curriculum so that students can compare, contrast, evaluate, and develop cultural competence. 

 

 

Level I	Novice-Mid
Level II	Novice-Mid to Novice-High
Level III	Novice-High to Intermediate-Low
Level IV	Intermediate-Low
Level V	Intermediate-Mid