Testing your speaking proficiency

You can test your speaking proficiency by choosing a speaking task to perform, recording yourself, and listening to your performance later. You can compare your performance to the descriptions of different speaking proficiency levels in the ACTFL Guidelines.

• Choose a task appropriate for the proficiency level you think describes you, or ask someone else to choose the task.

• Do not rehearse the specific task ahead of time.

  Reason:

  The point is to see if you can perform a task that represents your overall proficiency, not to memorize a speech.

• Choose a speaking task representative of what you think is your current level. Even better, ask a friend to choose a task for you so you will not choose something you know you can do.
• Record yourself doing the task.
• Reread the description of the different levels of speaking proficiency in the ACTFL guidelines.
• Listen to the tape and decide as honestly as possible which level of the guidelines your performance matches.

• Example: Using a wordless book to test your speaking proficiency
• Example: Giving directions to test your speaking proficiency
• Example: Describing a process to test your speaking proficiency

• Task module: Testing your speaking proficiency
• In task module: Testing your language proficiency
• In task module: Checking your progress
• In task module: How to manage your language learning program
• In modular book: Managing Your Language Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 15 September 1998

© 1999 SIL International