December 03, 2024
Our team was in Philadelphia for the ACTFL 2024 convention in late November. Bilingualism and Language Competency were major topics at this year’s ACTFL convention. We thought we would share some of the key take-aways.
In 2012, California started recognizing high school students who were proficient in two or more languages. Since this recognition was a literal seal on a student's transcript, the award was called the Seal of Biliteracy.
When this movement started a little more than ten years ago, only one US state offered this award. By 2024, however, all 50 US states began offering the Seal of Biliteracy to their students.
We at Compro Technologies were delighted to note educator excitement about this growth at the 2024 ACTFL Convention in Philadelphia. In our conversations with teachers, publishers, and government officials, however, we confirmed that measuring language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing isn't always as straightforward as it seems.
How does one go about measuring the language skills of a learner when they're listening to a podcast or delivering a presentation?
Luckily, ACTFL offers proficiency guidelines that help classify language learners into levels — starting from Novice Low on one end, all the way to Advanced High on the other. (By the way, if you are in Europe, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or CEFR offers something similar.)
Behind the scenes, many publishers and state education departments will use these guidelines and scoring rubrics to design curricula and assessments. This effort goes beyond using student seat time as a measure for learning. It employs rubrics and scoring guides to measure student competency or ability to acquire new skills — skills needed to learn a new language or 21st-century skills like creativity and problem-solving. This endeavor also requires determining student goals, designing student learning paths, tracking student progress, and providing custom feedback as a means to propel student learning.
Any edtech product used by educators and students must be flexible enough to support these important learning ideas. At Compro Technologies, we are committed to listening to the concerns of teachers and publishers while working to design and deploy custom LMSs that serve the needs of the learner. This commitment is especially relevant today, as the movement to acquire proficiency in a second language gains steam in the US and elsewhere.