American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages


American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages is a language education organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. It is an individual membership organization of more than 10,000 language educators and administrators from elementary through graduate education, as well as in government and industry.
The organization was founded in 1967 as a small offshoot of the Modern Language Association. Since then, the organization has set industry standards, established proficiency guidelines, advocated for language education funding, and connected colleagues at the ACTFL Annual Convention.

Teacher of the Year

Each year the organization names the ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year. The Teacher of the Year becomes a spokesperson for the language profession to increase the visibility of the importance of learning languages and cultures to the general public.
The Language Educator magazine is ACTFL's membership publication. TLE is published quarterly with issues available to members in print and for digital download and via a mobile app.

ACTFL language proficiency guidelines

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines provide a means of assessing the proficiency of a foreign language speaker. It is widely used in schools and universities in the United States and the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview is the most widely used oral proficiency test in North America.
The guidelines are broken up into different proficiency levels:
  • novice – subdivided into low, mid, and high
  • intermediate – subdivided into low, mid, and high
  • advanced – subdivided into low, mid, and high
  • superior
  • distinguished
These proficiency levels are defined separately for ability to listen, speak, read and write. Thus, in those American programs that emphasize written language over spoken, students may reach the advanced level in reading and writing while remaining at a lower level in listening and speaking.
The ACTFL Performance Descriptors are defined in three different subsets of communications skills with their own more generalized grading scales in terms of domains, functions, contexts/ content, text type, language control, vocabulary, communication strategies, cultural awareness in all of the following modes of communication:
  • Interpersonal
  • Interpretative
  • Presentational