In collaboration with ACTFL, the Language Institute hosted the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Familiarization Workshop for 30 UW–Madison language educators in September-October 2025. Workshop participants were instructors of Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Hmong, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yoruba.
The workshop was held online in a hybrid format, with both asynchronous online work and two synchronous online discussion sessions facilitated by Mary Jo Lubrano, Yale University.
Workshop schedule:
- September 19, 2025: Initial access to workshop modules. Participants completed assigned modules in advance of two synchronous, online sessions on October 3 and October 17.
- 3:00-4:30 pm, Friday, October 3, 2025: Discussion Session 1 (online), facilitated by Mary Jo Lubrano
- 3:00-4:30 pm, Friday, October 17, 2025: Discussion Session 2 (online), facilitated by Mary Jo Lubrano
About the workshop: This workshop familiarized participants with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, the ACTFL Rating Scale, and the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), a valid and reliable means of assessing how well a person speaks a language. The workshop will include practice applying the ACTFL speaking assessment criteria to language samples, as well as applications and implications of the OPI in classroom instruction.
After completion of the workshop, participants should be able to:
- Define the concept of proficiency
- Differentiate between the major ACTFL proficiency levels
- Describe typical linguistic features of each of the major ACTFL speaking levels
- Differentiate between the sublevels of the ACTFL proficiency levels
- Describe the different ACTFL speaking assessment criteria for each major level
- Describe the structure of the ACTFL OPI
- Identify effective techniques for eliciting a language sample
- Apply the assessment criteria to language samples
Workshop participants who completed all components received a Certificate of Completion from ACTFL.
Important! Participants who completed this workshop are not eligible to apply for OPI Tester Certification. Instructors who are interested in ACTFL OPI Tester Certification would need to enroll directly through ACTFL in the longer OPI Assessment Workshop or Modified OPI Assessment Workshop.
Application deadline: The application deadline was Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
Eligibility: All UW–Madison faculty, academic staff, and graduate teaching assistants who teach languages other than English at the university were eligible to apply for the workshop. Since spots are limited, participants must commit to completing all workshop components (approximately 15 hours).
Contact and workshop coordinator: Dianna Murphy, Language Institute
Sponsor: Language Institute