American Council On The Teaching Of Foreign Languages Research Articles

Creating a Culture for the Preparation of an ACTFL/NCATE Program Review

This article examines what one university has done to prepare for its program review for recognition by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), a Specialized Professional Association (SPA) of NCATE. The history of the Standards movement within higher education is neither long nor exhaustive; however, with the publication of the ACTFL/NCATE Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers (2002), universities must begin to focus efforts on the training of future K‐12 foreign language teachers. Six considerations are offered to foreign language and pedagogy faculty: (1) engaging all faculty in the program review process, (2) establishing a culture of oral proficiency, (3) educating faculty on standards, (4) revising curricula, (5) preparing the seven assessments required by ACTFL/NCATE, and (6) making use of technology for data collection.

Advanced Proficiency for Foreign Language Teacher Candidates: What Can We Do to Help Them Achieve This Goal?

ABSTRACT: This article examines various issues related to the development of advanced proficiency by foreign language teacher candidates with the goal of providing information and strategies for teacher educators and administrators at the university level. Recent changes in the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requirements stipulate that foreign language teacher candidates in specific languages (e.g., French, German, Spanish) must achieve the Advanced‐Low rating on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI)/Writing Proficiency Test (WPT). The article includes descriptions of language proficiency required for foreign language teaching and assessments; a survey of curricula and institutional resources for foreign language education at the university level, which support the development of advanced proficiency; and recommendations for facilitating Advanced language proficiency by foreign language teacher candidates.

Collaborative Teacher Research: Learning with Students

Abstract: This qualitative case study explores how collaborative teacher research serves as a professional development model for practicing teachers. The purpose of the study is to examine how participation in a collaborative teacher research group affected three French teachers' understandings of one state's foreign language standards, and to look at how those understandings were realized in a collaborative teacher research (CTR) project. This article specifically focuses on the results emanating from how the three French teachers individually and collaboratively interpreted and implemented foreign language standards while participating in CTR. Data were collected from workshops, journal entries, classroom observations, lesson plans and materials, workshop evaluations, the teachers' research, and e-mail conversations. Results show that the teachers learned about the standards primarily from collaborating with their students. Introduction New Visions in Action (NVA), sponsored by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) in Iowa, is moving forward a national agenda for foreign language education in an effort to meet goals set forth in the national K-12 foreign language standards (Met, 2000). These standards provide a vision of instruction for which teachers need a high level of language proficiency, extensive cultural competence, a repertoire of approaches that are learner centered and focused on communication, and knowledge about implementing strategies for working with diverse learners who have not traditionally enrolled in foreign language classes (Phillips, 1998). Foreign language pedagogy, described in the manner of the National Standards (1999), will not be realized without sustained professional development for practicing teachers. Past professional development programs have been criticized for their one-shot structure, top-down approach, and failure to address the specific needs of foreign language teachers, resulting in little or no effect on classroom instruction. This professional development paradigm is changing. Current literature discussing professional development concurs that it must be long term, collaborative, content specific, job embedded, inquiry based, and focused on the needs of teachers and the goals we are setting for our students (Alien, 2004; Clair, 2000; Diaz-Maggioli, 2003; Klonsky 2002; Kreeft Peyton, 1997; Lewis, 2000; lieberman & Miller, 2000; McCarthy & Riley, 2000). Further, teachers must be actively involved in both its design and implementation (Bartz & Keefe Singer, 1996; Darling Hammond, 1997; Glisan, 1996; Kreeft Peyton, 1997). The Teacher Development Task Force-one working group of the NVA project-is in the process of establishing a national framework that defines effective professional development for foreign language teachers. Part of the work of the task force involves identifying criteria for the creation and evaluation of professional development programs and subsequently identifying and showcasing exemplary program models. Empirical data from studies investigating the effectiveness of professional development programs are needed to inform the group's ongoing work. NVA has, in particular, called for research on the effectiveness of alternative professional development models (Curtain, 2000). Action research offers a viable solution. Although this type of research, from here on referred to as collaborative teacher research (CTR), is recognized for promoting teacher development and change in teaching practice (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 1994; Burns & Hood, 1995; Freeman, 1998; McNiff, 1993), and as an insightful means for contributing to the knowledge base of teaching (Allwright; 1993; Somekh, 1993; Stenhouse, 1981) we are only beginning to know how foreign language teachers carry out this type of research (Burns, 1999). In addition, while collaboration is the critical component of successful teacher research, it has tended to be promoted and conducted in an individualistic way (Burns, 1999). …

Ongoing Assessment of a University Foreign Language Program

Abstract: This paper reviews the process a university foreign language department went through in developing a procedure to assess its curriculum using the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and, to a lesser extent, the National Standards, as guiding principles (National Standards, 1996). This procedure included a noncredit workshop that met only once to inform students about the process, an oral proficiency test, and a portfolio of students' written work. Rubrics for evaluation are described. Tables show preliminary results for the first year's assessment. It was found that the average oral proficiency rating for graduating seniors was Advanced‐Low and that 74% rated Intermediate‐High or better. Similarly, the average written proficiency rating was Advanced‐Low. Students also presented material that documented their abilities to analyze literary texts, write in a variety of styles, and demonstrate an awareness of target language culture.

Revising the revised format of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview

Since the early 1980s proponents of proficiency examinations such as ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) have been criticized for the low validity and reliability of tests such as the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview). Despite these strong concerns, the most recent edition of the ACTFL Tester Training Manual (Swender et al., 1999) does not reveal substantial changes from the previous manual published in (Buck et al., 1986). While a complete elimination of proficiency tests such as the ACTFL-OPI may be neither feasible nor necessary, some practical changes may be appropriate. In this article I describe minor structural changes of the ACTFL-OPI framework that would not eliminate the practical benefits of a proficiency test, but which address substantial concerns related to the validity and reliability of the instrument.

Reasonable Expectations: Oral Proficiency Goals for Intermediate‐ Level Students of German

This article reports a study gauging the average oral proficiency as measured by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) of college students (N = 20) studying German at the end of their fourth semester. All OPIs were official ACTFL double‐rated interviews. Proficiency, as measured by the OPI, ranged between Novice High and Intermediate Mid. Discussion centers on reasonable expectations for high school graduation and for college language requirements.

Assessing Speaking

The publication of the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Guidelines (1986) and the creation and popularization of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL-OPI) have had a profound effect on foreign and second language instruction and assessment, drawing attention to language students' abilities to use language in performing particular functions and tasks rather than to what they have learned about language. The growing interest in communicative language teaching, with its emphasis on meaningful interaction in the language as opposed to knowledge of linguistic rules, has complemented interest in the ACTFL Guidelines' descriptions of functional language ability and the interview-format oral proficiency interview.

Integrating a Series of Oral Assessments: Quick, Low-Stress Options for the Idealist

The communicative emphasis prevalent in most beginningand intermediate-level German language classrooms today is slowly beginning to affect the way in which teachers assess the language skills of their students. The growing interest in oral abilities is also mirrored in an ever-increasing body of research on different aspects of the development and evaluation of speaking in a second language. I As Nic Underhill writes in his very practical volume Testing Spoken Language, There is a lot of interest now in oral testing, partly because teaching is more than ever directed towards the speaking and listening skills, particularly in the early stages. Naturally, this should be reflected in the testing (3). While the official evaluation of speaking skills is sometimes relegated to an often nebulous class participation grade, today many language programs include additional, formal assessments of speaking ability. Since the publication of the Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in 1982, many language teachers have begun to integrate an oral interview of one sort or another into their programs. These interviews, many of which are proficiency-oriented and conducted by non-ACTFL-certified interviewers, are for some programs the only official assessment of students' speaking skills in the syllabus. Although language programs often claim to have a communicative approach and to emphasize all four language skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking), the tests and quizzes in most German language programs remain predominantly focused on written language production.2 For those who have adopted a communicative approach to language learning and who would like to see the acquisition of oral communication skills emphasized in their language programs, a series of varied oral tests or quizzes can prove invaluable. The integration of multiple oral assessments into the curriculum (as opposed to just one or two) has two major advantages. First, a series of oral quizzes is fairer to the language students. Because instructors are interested in an accurate picture of students' speaking skills, multiple oral assessments with a variety of tasks and formats can provide a more well-rounded and accurate picture of student abilities than a single oral interview. Given the variety of learner types among students,3 a varied series of oral evaluations can also allow more students to find a type of oral assessment in which they can excel. Furthermore, multiple assessments lessen the harm done if a student performs uncharacteristically poorly on one assessment. A second important advantage of a series of oral tasks is the message that this attention to speaking assessment sends to the students. The students not only gain valuable, concrete feedback on their speaking development throughout the year, a series of grades for oral work also implies that this element of students' development in the target language is on a par with other regularly-assessed skills, such as writing or reading comprehension. Also, students for whom the grades form the primary motivation, will be encouraged to devote serious attention to their speaking when those skills and abilities are regularly checked and given grades. Finally, integrating multiple oral tests into a language program keeps the profession honest. If we wish to claim that speaking is important and that our courses are communicative in nature, then our grading and assessment program should mirror those goals.

Reading Proficiency Assessment and the ILR/ACTFL Text Typology: A Reevaluation

Two previous investigations into the validity of the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR)/American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) text typology concluded that the model did not accurately predict test performance for foreign language (FL) readers. However, these studies suffered from serious flaws in design and implementation that may have led to erroneous conclusions. The present study considered the validity of the pragmatic approach to text difficulty that was put forward by Child in 1987—the text typology underlying the ILR/ACTFL proficiency guidelines. The following question guided this research: Does the Child discourse‐type hierarchy predict text difficulty for L2 readers? Test data were collected from 62 U.S. Government employees having some previously demonstrated French proficiency. Nine authentic French texts and a combination of testing methods were employed. The results suggested that the Child text hierarchy may indeed provide a sound basis for the development of FL reading tests when it is applied by trained raters and when such tests include an adequate sample of passages at each level to be tested.

Invalidating validity claims for the ACTFL oral rating scale

Dandonoli and Henning [ Foreign Language Annals, 23(1), 11–22 (1990)] and Henning [ System, 20(3), 365–372 (1992)] aim to present evidence for the validity of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) rating scales [ ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1982, 1986)]. This paper examines the evidence presented in these publications and argues that it is not sufficient for a claim for validity to be made. Lantolf and Frawley [ ADFL Bulletin, 23(2), 34–37 (1992)] indicate that they had “some concern about the experimental design and statistics” of the studies conducted by Dandonoli and Henning; the basis for their concern is investigated.

The relationship between criterion-based levels of oral proficiency and norm-referenced scores of general proficiency in English as a second language

This paper presents data from a validation study of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The “distinctness” of OPI ratings from scores generated by Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and one other examination was assessed on the basis of comparisons among 70 sets of scores from students of English as a second language who took all three test. Results of correlational analyses provide evidence that the OPI measures an ability (or collection of abilities) distinct from the skills evaluated by the other testing instruments, and thus are supportive of the “construct validity” of this oral interview (cf. Bachman and Palmer, 1981; Dandonoli and Henning, 1990). Correlations involving the OPI were consistently lower than correlations among subscores from the other tests. Even the correlation between regression-based, “predicted” OPI ratings and actual OPI ratings was not significantly higher than the correlation between actual OPI ratings and the single best predictor among the raw test scores. However, employing one particular “cut-off” procedure rendered OPI ratings completely predictable from TOEFL scores, a finding which underlines the relevance of potential test uses to the validation process.

The Development and Validation of a Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview

nation of the Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) (1; 2), proficiency instruction and testing have become household words in foreign language education. The Guidelines, originally developed in 1982, were the subject of over 400 articles in professional journals by 1988 (8; 18) and represent the efforts of ACTFL, with assistance from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Federal Interagency Language Roundtable (FILR) (9). As a method of assessing global speaking proficiency, the oral proficiency interview (OPI) has also been widely disseminated. During the 1980s, ACTFL trained approximately 2000 oral proficiency interviewers and raters in Spanish, French, German, and Russian. This article reports on an alternative method to the face-to-face procedure employed by the OPI for eliciting speech samples that may be rated according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. While many professionals in the commonly taught languages were being trained in the OPI procedures, it became clear to staff at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) that in the less commonly taught languages problems of manpower and economics would limit the accessibility of the benefits of comprehensive oral proficiency testing offered by the OPI. Thus CAL sought to explore the use of a tapemediated procedure for assessing oral proficiency. At the same time, CAL was anxious to ensure that the ACTFLIFILR Proficiency Guidelines would be used as the scoring scale for the new procedure. In other words, the new tapemediated procedure would have to collect examinee speech samples containing the necessary breadth to be rated on the ACTFL scale. Through its research and development projects, CAL has developed what has come to be called the simulated oral proficiency interview (SOPI) to achieve these ends (13). The SOPI is distinguished from earlier tapemediated assessments of speaking ability, such as the Recorded Oral Proficiency Exam (ROPE) (10) or the Test of Spoken English (TSE) (6), by its combination of each of these three characteristics: 1) in format it is similar to the OPI, beginning with a warm-up and using a variety of speaking tasks at different levels on the ACTFL scale to probe speaking proficiency; 2) it uses both aural and visual stimuli to elicit the

Computerized Testing of Nonparticipatory L2 Listening Comprehension Proficiency: An ESL Prototype Development Effort

operational the construct of foreign/second language (L2) proficiency, researchers and practitioners continually debate theories concerning the nature of language proficiency (10; 21; 22), the functional relationship of proficiency to classroom instruction and materials development (4; 9; 26; 30; 42; 53; 60), and the measurement of its component skills (6; 11; 18; 24; 28; 31; 33; 35; 54). However, even as the debates rage about the definition of the construct and about the validity and utility of various kinds of proficiency measures, the perceived need grows for valid, reliable, and cost-efficient proficiency tests for use in education, industry, and government. In fact, although a decade has passed since the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies recommended that a common, nationally recognized standard for measuring developed foreign language (FL) proficiency be adopted in this country (56: p. 23), the imperative for developing methods of assessing FL proficiency is almost as great today as it was in the early 1980s. The need to create tests of proficiency in the less commonly taught languages (LCTs), especially in the area of listening comprehension, is particularly acute. In their 1982 survey of materials development needs in the LCTs in the United States, Clark and Johnson asserted that no appropriate and readily available external-to-program measures of developed functional language proficiency existed for many of the LCTs at that time (p. 69). As the 1990s begin, oral proficiency measures and guidelines for some of the LCTs have been created, but the situation has not changed appreciably for the LCTs as far as the assessment of listening comprehension proficiency is concerned. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), for example, are engaged in developing oral proficiency guidelines and tests for certain LCTs: Swahili, Lingala, and Hausa (54: p. 108). However, tests of proficiency in listening comprehension have yet to be devised for these languages, for many of the other LCTs, and, for that matter, even for many of the commonly taught lan-

The Proficiency Movement: Where Do We Go from Here?

The proficiency movement in second language teaching has had a wide impact because it represents not only an attempt to introduce a national metric but also an attempt to modify the nature of the second language curriculum. The curriculum has been pointed in the direction of instruction in the functional use of language. The list of languages affected by the proficiency movement includes both commonly and less commonly taught languages. This paper suggests that the impact of the proficiency movement will be more difficult to attain in Russian language teaching because the field has not yet moved far enough from the traditional grammar-translation approach. It is noted that the organization of language teaching in America mitigates against the acquisition of usable skills by imposing severe limitations on time allotted to the study of foreign languages as well as by adopting a non-use orientation. A brief history of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) generic guidelines is presented, followed by a description of the Russian proficiency guidelines and a review of proficiency testing. Proficiency is further discussed in terms of the four skills (listening, reading, writing, speaking) an proficiency-based textbooks. Suggestions for improving the instructional system are offered. Contains 18 references. (LB) ********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************

The Development and Validation of the Portuguese Speaking Test

During the past decade, thanks primarily to the efforts of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and with the assistance of several government language training agencies under the auspices of the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR), a major theoretical and practical development in the field of foreign language assessment has taken place. This development is the application of a orientation in the testing of foreign language competence. This movement has also brought about the adoption of a proficiency approach to language instruction in many quarters. Two standards lie at the heart of the oral proficiency testing movement: the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the ACTFL/ILR speaking proficiency guidelines. The OPI is a direct face-to-face evaluation of the learner's second language competence conducted by trained interviewers and raters. [For information on the direct oral proficiency interview used by the government the reader is referred to Wilds (1975) and Sollenberger (1978). For information on the ACTFL oral interview see Higgs (1984), and Stansfield and Harmon (1987)]. The ACTFL proficiency guidelines (ACTFL 1986), based on the earlier developed ILR guidelines, provide the criteria against which language proficiency is rated. Between 1980 and 1988, ACTFL trained approximately 1,600 oral proficiency interviewers and raters in the major foreign languages taught in the United States: Spanish, French, German, and Russian. As a result, oral proficiency testing is widely available to examinees in need of a rating of their competency in these languages. However for less commonly taught languages such as Portuguese, the scarce number of trained interviewers makes it difficult if not impractical to connect an interviewer in one part of the country with an examinee in another part of the country. This situation impedes the availability of an oral proficiency interview to an individual who may have need for such a rating. The Portuguese Speaking Test (PST), a semi-direct test of oral proficiency, was developed in response to this need. Semi-direct testing (using recorded and printed stimuli and recording examinee responses) is the most efficient and feasible approach to proficiency measurement in the less commonly taught languages. This approach eliminates the need to sustain a costly and labor intensive face-to-face (direct) Oral Proficiency Interview program for low-volume languages whose enrollment figures may be unstable from year to year. However, semidirect testing does provide the benefits derived from a continual assessment program, and it can serve as the impetus for competency-based learning on the part of students of these languages. There have been several efforts to develop semi-direct tests of oral proficiency in foreign languages. One of the earliest was the Recorded Oral Proficiency Examination (ROPE), designed and described by Lowe and Clifford (1980). In the ROPE, the examinee hears a series of tape-recorded questions in the target

Toward a Modification of the "Proficiency" Construct for Reading in a Foreign Language

In 1981, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) published its Provisional Proficiency Guidelines (generic and language specific descriptions) for speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In 1986, ACTFL published its updated and sometimes expanded Proficiency Guidelines (generic descriptions only). The changes in the descriptions were by and large improvements based on the experience of trying to implement the Provisional Guidelines and on the critical response of foreign language researchers. While much attention has been focused on the speaking guidelines and the Oral Proficiency Interview, only recently has attention turned to the reading guidelines which form the focus of this article. In particular, the specific references to the implicit and explicit theoretical underpinnings in the 1986 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for reading will be examined. Although they have been updated, certain problems remain in the 1986 Guidelines with respect to a definition of reading and to the assessment of reading proficiency. Herein, the Guidelines will be examined along four lines. First, given the role assigned to background knowledge, reading is defined as essentially a bottom up process where top down features compensate for underdeveloped linguistic competence rather than as an interactive process whereby meaning is found not only in the text but also created by the readers. Second, by assessing levels of reading proficiency via a hierarchy of skills, comprehension is implicitly defined as a quantifiable product rather than as a process. Third, by defining levels of reading proficiency according to text type without any reference to the readers themselves, the Guidelines account for only a partial model of reading. Fourth, the theoretical model of reading on which the Guidelines are based is a hierarchical one, not an interactive model, despite claims to the contrary. Finally, the role of reading and some reading exercises in one university-level Spanish language curriculum are discussed.1 An Historical Perspective

On Hierarchies of Reading Skills and Text Types

to describe the target language performance abilities of foreign language learners.' The proficiency movement is spearheaded by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) which over the last several years has promoted the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, proficiency-based curricula, syllabi, and, in general, are behind proficiency-based teaching. In the proficiency context, foreign language professionals are probably most familiar with the Oral Proficiency Interview, especially with the large scale training undertaken and the widespread implementation of oral proficiency requirements. Now gaining increasing attention is reading proficiency, which is the concern of the present paper. The ACTFL definition of reading proficiency is given in terms of a trisection between content, function, and accuracy which translate more specifically to reading as: text type, reading skill, and task-based performance (Galloway). The proficiency construct, as shown in Figure I, is characterized by two parallel hierarchies, one of text types and the other of reading skills, which are cross-sectioned to define developmental levels. In other words, a specific developmental level is associated with a particular text type and particular reading skills. By the definition of hierarchy, high level skills and text types subsume low ones so that readers demonstrating high levels of reading proficiency should be able to interact with texts and be able to demonstrate the reading skills characteristic of low levels of reading proficiency. Conversely, readers at low levels of the proficiency scale should neither be able to demonstrate high level skills nor interact with high level texts.

An Introduction to New Ideas in Language Teaching: An Annotated Bibliography for Teachers

During the past few decades a major shift has occurred in the view of language taken by linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, giving impetus to a corresponding change of focus in foreign language teaching. Old questions have been re-asked, and new answers are being formulated. What, exactly, IS language? How do people learn languages? What is the role of grammar instruction? Of the language classroom? How can we best teach listening, speaking, reading and writing? What happens inside the learner as he/she learns a language? How can the teacher accelerate that internal process? The re-asking of these questions has generated new ideas which have begun to permeate classroom practice, and whose influence will likely be felt for some time to come. The broad term of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been applied to new methods, materials, and even syllabi that have grown out of these new ideas. Methods falling under the CLT umbrella share two common elements: focus on the development of communicative abilities in students rather than on the instillation of knowledge ABOUT the language; and a view of the learner as a creative participant in the learning process rather than as a passive recipient of information. Even the traditionally assigned role of grammar instruction has been questioned by second language acquisition theorists like Stephen Krashen, whose five hypotheses emphasized the role of the subconscious in language acquisition. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) is actively promoting proficiency as the principal goal of language instruction. Thus theorists and practitioners have turned their attention to the student's ABILITY in the language, rather than to their knowledge ABOUT it. As researchers, theorists, curriculum developers, and classroom teachers address these issues, an enormous quantity of new and provocative material is being generated. This annotated bibliography is offered as a compilation of easily accessible works of both practical and theoretical orientation. These works may serve as an introduction to this rich new field for new and experienced teachers, graduate students, methods instructors refocusing their courses, and others who wish to expand their understanding of the nature of language and language learning. Unfortun tely, such a bibliography can only scratch the surface of the offerings in this vast field, but interested readers will find more extensive citations in specific areas in many of the works listed. Those works marked with an asterisk are recommended for readers seeking a quick yet representative introduction to the field.

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Foreign Language Oral Proficiency Ratings

ABSTRACT The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has developed an oral proficiency test, the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), which may become the official test of oral performance for prospective foreign language teachers in Texas. Professionals in foreign language education are raising concerns about the effect of anxiety on Oral Proficiency Interview ratings. The purpose of this study was to provide an assessment of how anxiety may influence scores on the OPI.An examination of the relationship between anxiety and oral performance must take foreign language ability into account. In this study, subjects' foreign language proficiency was assessed through a Self‐Appraisal of Language Proficiency questionnaire and a dictation test. Subjects' anxiety was assessed on the basis of four independent anxiety measures: the State Anxiety Inventory, the Cognitive Interference Questionnaire, a Self‐Report of Anxiety, and a Foreign Language Anxiety Scale of Reactions.A total of sixty subjects took the OPI at the University of Texas at Austin, Southwest Texas State University, or the University of Texas at El Paso. These subjects were either majors in French, German, or Spanish or prospective French, German, or Spanish teachers at one of these three institutions. The Self‐Appraisal of Speaking Proficiency and the State Anxiety Inventory were administered before the OPI, and the other anxiety instruments were given immediately after it.Results showed significant negative correlations between anxiety and the OPI, but once the effects of ability were accounted for, the correlations were no longer significant. In other words, once the effect of an individual's language proficiency was accounted for, oral performance no longer decreased as anxiety increased.An important qualification that must be noted is that subjects were aware that the OPI in this study represented an unofficial administration of the test. Therefore, this study does not provide data on anxiety levels for official test situations.

Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache and the Oral Proficiency Interview: A Comparison of Test Scores

Two of the profession's most widely known measures of individual language skills are the Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache (ZDaF) and the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), developed respectively by the Goethe Institute/Deutscher Volkshochschulverband and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)/Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR)/Educational Testing Services (ETS). Since both tests provide valuable feedback regarding the facility and quality of spoken expression in German, we felt that a study which might shed light on possible score correlations between the two examinations seemed timely and in order. It was our intention, therefore, to investigate what correlations might exist between an individual's ZDaF score and OPI rating. To begin, we wish to describe briefly the ZDaF and OPI instruments themselves.