Group items tagged

"Welcome to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012 online. Here you will find the most current version of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Speaking, Writing, Listening, and Reading made interactive through the inclusion of glossed terms and multimedia exemplars. You can explore the Guidelines by skill or by level, listen to and read samples in English that represent abilities at each of the major proficiency levels."

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines

ACTFL 21st Century Skills Map

"The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements are self-assessment checklists used by language learners to assess what they "can do" with language in the Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational modes of communication. These modes of communication are defined in the National Standards for 21st Century Language Learning and organized in the checklist into the following categories: Interpersonal (Person-to-Person) Communication Presentational Speaking (Spoken Production) Presentational Writing (Written Production) Interpretive Listening Interpretive Reading Click within each cell to display the benchmark and the associated Can Do Statement PDF. Or, click on a Level/Mode row or column to expand the entire level or mode."

A key new position statement from ACTFL

How can language educators effectively transition students from language "learning" to language "acquisition"? This is a question to focus on as all language educators try to create classroom experiences that meet the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' (ACTFL) guidelines. ACTFL is calling for a shift in all language classes. Students and teachers need to use the second language (L2) at least 90% of the time. This amount of target language (TL) use will only create success for students if the teacher uses Comprehensible Input (CI). L2, TL and CI are three must-know acronyms for language educators today. Language "acquisition" is a key concept to our journey towards using research-based methods to update our language teaching practices.

#fle #langchat #actfl @aatfrench

Knowledge in Action, AP+Project-Research-a #PBL Approach to #AP via @Edutopia http://ow.ly/mi8gB #actfl #langchat @ascd @biepbl #pblchat

"With the help of a three-year grant from the US Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities, an eleven-member task force, representing a variety of languages, levels of instruction, program models, and geographic regions, undertook the task of defining content standards - what students should know and be able to do - in foreign language education. The final document, Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century, first published in 1996, represents an unprecedented consensus among educators, business leaders, government, and the community on the definition and role of foreign language instruction in American education. This visionary document has been used by teachers, administrators, and curriculum developers at both state and local levels to begin to improve foreign language education in our nation's schools. The 3rd Edition Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century, revised including Arabic standards, is now available."

ACTFL's position statement on 90% rule

Activating Communication:Focusing Lenses How can we use focusing lenses to guide thinking when creating instruction? How can an old unit "going to a café" be changed to a thematic unit on food and hunger that focuses on performance tasks integrated to create a meaningful cultural context? How can images, videos and other technology encourage learners to critically think of solutions to real-world global issues on environment in innovative ways? We will explore these questions through the lenses of an UbD designed thematic units and the concepts of the ACTFL 21st Century Skills Map.

Tons of resources collected by our good friend and ACTFL President, Toni Theisen.

Rubrics are assessment tools that specifically outline how to succeed at a certain task. Although many #langchat teachers know about rubrics, there is discussion about the best ways to create and implement them in the world language classroom.

An artilcle from The Language Teacher magazine on the WL 21st Century Skills Map

Toni's resources shared at #CLTASB13 Summer Seminar