2009 PRESENTATION

Oral Proficiency, Accuracy and Fluency

in EFL: Teacher-Learner Self-Evaluation
and Linguistic Competencies Awareness

Armando Gonzlez Salinas PhD

Postgrado de la Facultad de Filosofa y Letras
Universidad Autnoma de Nuevo Len

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INTRODUCTION
Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?

How much English do I know?

How much active vocabulary?
How do I sound when I speak? To other people,
of course.
Am I convincing, informative, persuasive,
entretaining or am I just a regular EFL speaker?
Do I know when to change from one topic to
another in non-classroom communication?
What kind of language patterns, if any, do I use
to begin to talk, to follow up a conversation, to
end, interrupt, or deviate it, to change the
specific topic for communicative purpose(s)?

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ORAL PROFICIENCY:
towards a definition
1.

To be ORAL PROFICIENT in any language

exchange is demonstrated when we can feel
confident enough to:
Initiate, follow or continue, become parte of,
terminate, or change topics in a conversation, at
different degrees or levels of accuarcy, fluency,
coherence, and formality, in a natural and
spontaneus way, within a certain number of
contextualized situations, that you might know a
little or very much about, and which makes the
conversation or the situation familiar or unfamiliar,
and provides you with the possibility to stay
(longer) or not in a given exchange of inforamation
within an interaction.

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To be PROFICIENT in a language, in general terms, is to

KNOW that language WELL.
But what about the amount of:
Syntax, lexicon, sociolinguistic appropiateness, nonverbal
language, cultural awareness and understanding; plus
good pronunciation and a neutralized accent.
1.1 A dictionary definition
The Americna Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
(1978) defines the term as:
performing in a given art, skill or branch of learning with
expert correctness and facility
It further specifies:
a high degree of competence through training
(quoted in Omaggio 1993 p.2)

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1.2 Two basic distinctive concepts.

The definition just reviewed implies the concepts of

COMPETENCE and PERFORMANCE.
COMPETENCE: the underlying implicit or explicit
knowledge of the system of the language, that is,
the rules of grammar, vocabulary, and the
combination of linguistic elements to form
acceptable sentences.
PERFORMANCE: the actual production and
comprehension of language in specific instances of
language use.
(Chomsky 1965, adapted in Omaggio 1993/2002)

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2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Campbell and Wales (1970) and Hymes (1972)
modified and complemented the concept of competence by
distinguishing between
GRAMMATICAL or linguistic COMPETENCE and
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
This concept entailes sociolinguistic and contextual
awareness as well as Grammatical Competence

2.1 Four components.

Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983)
discussed and developed a model of
communicative competence with four major
components:

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1.
GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE: it refers to the extent to which
a language user has learned to manage the linguistic code

2. SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE: it refers to the degree to

which one can use and understand grammatical forms to carry out specific
language functions.
It also implies the degrees of formality and informality, the choice
of appropriate words, structure, intonation and nonverbal langauge.

3.
DISCOURSE COMPETENCE: the ability to combine ideas to
achieve cohesion in form and coherence in thought. The use of linking
words to create unity of ideas.

4.
STRATEGIC COMPETENCE: the use of verbal and nonverbal
communication strategies to negotiate meaning, such as paraphrasing
through circumlocution, or approximations, using gestures, and asking for
repetition or to speak more slowly .

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The development of various teaching models of

Communicative Competence (CC) never included
the idea of levels of competence that could measure
learnerss progress, nor provided with a guide for
the design of program objectives.
This does not necessarily mean that the proficiency
guidelines do so, they actually do not, but they do
help us, educators and foreign language teachers,
to know and get familiar with what is expected to be
skillful in language use for communicative purposes.

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3. The American Council on Teaching of Foreign

Languages (ACTFL). Provisional Proficiency Guidelines
This is what made them develop these guidelines:
i) the need to assess students foreign language
proficiency that could be nationally approved,
ii) the increasing interest to set standards about
excellence in language educational programs, as well as
iii) the need for standards in foreign language and
international studies in the late 70s.
All these purposes and others gave birth to the
Presidents Commission on Foreign Languages, which
suported the Language Teaching Profession concerned
with the issue of Proficiency, with especial emphasis on
Oral Skills.

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The ACTFL organization created the provisional

Proficiency Guidelines in November 1982 and have been
reviewing and revising them since then to add what is
considered relevant in the field of language acquisition,
teaching and learning in order to benefit the foreign
language user.
These guidelines define levels of functional
competence for the academic context (Omaggio 1993)
Q: How can a language user become competent in terms
of comunicative competence in a foreign language,
and how can that be measured and assessed?
A: By going from comunicative competence to
proficiency development, and by means of testing the
ability and availability of his/her language proficiency

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ORAL PROFICIENCY testing is a means to

measure and assess comunicative competence.
There is an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) which is
carried out by trained experts in order to find out to what
level an interviewee belongs through
ACHIEVEMENT TESTS and PROFICIENCY TESTS
Achievement tests measure the mastery of course
material, while Proficiency tests measure an individual
general competence in a language.

ACTFL assessments and ratings are recognized by the

federal Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) and the
American Council on Education (ACE). Due to ACTFL's
strict adherence to test development guidelines, research
and testing best practices, ACTFL ratings have emerged
as a standard measure of language proficiency in the U.S.
and internationally.

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ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines define and

measure foreign language ability in speaking, listening,
reading, and writing. They also provide a rating scale
with major ranges and sublevels, which are not linear in
nature but multidimensional as an expanding spiral.
(Lisking Gasparro 1987 quoted in Omagio 93)

3.1 Criteria for Level Description

The ACTFL guidelines, as they are used for their original
purpose, provide a well planned and structured range of
levels where a foreign language user is rated.
Omaggio (1993/2001) states that the levels of proficiency
on the ACTFL scale can be distinguished by
considering the six criteria underlying the proficiency
descriptions:

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1. A set of statements related to the linguistic FUNCTIONS that an individual is
typically able to express, what is identified as Global Tasks.
2. Then the CONTEXTS, which refers to the commuinicative circumstances
where a person uses language,
3. CONTENT AREAS which describe the topics that a language user is able to
discuss
4. The degree of ACURACY with which the message can be communicated for
each level on the scale,
5. The TEXT TYPES, which refer to the structure of the discourse, that is, how
much and how organized the different elements of speech are.
6. SOCIOLINGUISTIC CULTURE which implies the general sociolinguistic
knowledge and cultural background that enable a language user to interact
within a range of educated speech communities.

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3.2 Rating Scale and levels

The ACTFL Rating Scale conceives four major

levels from top to bottom:
SUPERIOR , ADVANCED (high and mid),
INTERMEDIATE (high and mid) and
NOVICE (high and low),
each of which describes an expected number of
communicative functions and global tasks, withing an
array of contexts and content areas, with different
degrees of accuracy, through particular text types and
sociolinguistic culture awareness.
The inverted hexagonal cone looks like the following:
https://www.languagetesting.com/assessments_academic.cfm#

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For practical reasons, we will concentrate on the

FUNCTIONS, the degree of ACCURACY and TEXT
TYPES.
Accuracy refers to the acceptability, quality and
precision of the message conveyed.
Text Type, in the set of assesment criteria, refers to
the structure of the discourse, i.e the quantity and
organizational aspects of speech.
NOVICE
Functions: no functional ability; speech limited to
memorized material
Accuracy: May be difficult to understand, even for
those accustumed to non-native speakers.
Text Type: Discrete words and phrases.

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INTERMEDIATE
Functions: Can create with language, ask and answer
simple questions on familiar topics, and handle a
simple situation or transaction.
Accuracy: Can be understood, with some
repetition, by speakers accustomed to non-native
speakers
Text Type: Discrete sentences and string of sentences
ADVANCED
Functions: Can narrate and describe in past,
present and future time/aspect, and handle a
complicated situation or transaction.
Accuracy: Can be understood without difficulty
by speakers unaccustumed to non-native speakers.
Text Type: Paragraph discourse.

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SUPERIOR
Functions: Can support opinion, hypothesize,
discuss abstract topics, and handle a
linguistically unfamiliar situation.
Accuracy: Errors virtually never interfere with
communication or disturb the native speaker.
Text Type: Extended Discourse
(Buck, Byrnes, and Thompson 1989 p. 3-6 quoted in Omaggio 1993/2001
Chapter 1)

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CONCLUSIONS
There are four important messages we have to
remember to clearly understand the
concept of profiency:
1.
Proficiency is NOT a theory of language
acquistition
2.
Proficiency is NOT a method of language
teaching
3.
Proficiency is NOT a curricular outline or
syllabus
4.
Proficiency does NOT imply a preocupation
with grammar or error

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If we want to encourage our students to become proficient,

ORAL PROFICIENT, in a foreign language, we should tell
them that we are preparing them, enabling them, and
helping them to become comunicatively competent in order
to meet physical as well as social obligations in an
environment where the target language is spoken as the
mother tongue, although not exclusively.
Then, for us EFL TEACHERS
ORAL PROFICIENCY
is a M U S T,
the best MEANS,
and ours and that of our learners commitment
and ultimate END

Everything covered here and all there is related to Proficiency can be found
in:

Omagio, Alice C. (1993) Teaching Language in Context. Proficiency

Oriented Instruction. 2nd Ed. Boston Mass: Heinle & Heinle Publishers,
Inc.