Abstract
This volume is devoted to the relationship between the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001) and the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 2012). This is an important topic, given that the two standards (or frameworks) have exerted significant influence on various areas of language teaching, learning, and assessment, such as language policy, curriculum design, test design, and score interpretation. Although the CEFR and the ACTFL Guidelines originate from different geographic areas, they share a common element: that is, the description of language proficiency through multi-level language proficiency scales. This naturally raises the question of how they relate to each other, in particular when establishing a link between their language proficiency levels. This collection of papers is “a joint effort to define the issues in and to embark on some preliminary studies for a crosswalk between the ACTFL Guidelines and the CEFR with implications not only for assessment but also for teaching and learning, teacher education, and educational standards” (p. 9). The papers originate from the 2010 ACTFL–CEFR Alignment Conference held at the University of Leipzig. The volume also includes the opening address by the late John Trim and the opening plenary paper by David Little from a follow-up conference in Provo, Utah in 2011.
The volume is organized into three parts. Part 1 contains three chapters focusing on theoretical issues related to the ACTFL–CEFR crosswalk. In the first chapter, Kenyon uses Bachman’s Assessment Use Argument (Bachman, 2005; Bachman & Palmer, 2010) as a framework for linking the ACTFL Guidelines and the CEFR from a psychometric perspective. Kenyon describes the multiple types of evidence needed for the linking, and stresses the need for clearly justified arguments to support the linking in a social context. In the second chapter, Chapelle draws upon an argument-based validity theory (Chapelle, 2008; Kane, 2006; Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 2003) to address the extent to which the ACTFL Guidelines and the CEFR are similar in their theoretical approaches to language, construct definition, and language development. Chapelle stresses that theoretical approaches constitute one area that needs to be explored in relation to an ACTFL–CEFR crosswalk, and, similar to Kenyon, calls for fully developed interpretive arguments to support the interpretation and use of specific tests. In the last chapter of Part 1, Clifford considers how differences in test purpose, test type, construct and scoring may hinder any alignment of scores reported in relation to the two frameworks. Clifford argues that alignment to either the ACTFL or the CEFR scales alone is not sufficient when two tests are compared to each other, without also considering such differences.
Part 2 contains five chapters. The first three chapters (Saville, Little, Green) focus on the CEFR and the remaining two (Lowe, Malone) focus on the ACTFL Guidelines. Saville describes the work of the Council of Europe in the 1970s that led to the publication of the CEFR in 2001 and discusses key aspects of its content and levels. Little discusses issues related to the CEFR and second language (L2) learning, and argues that if the CEFR is intended to be dynamic and in continuous evolution, as claimed by its authors (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 8), then it must be updated and refined, based both on independent research and evaluation of its use. In the last paper in this part dealing with the CEFR, Green explores how different approaches to judging the difficulty of comprehending text input can provide an empirical basis for comparing the ACTFL Guidelines and the CEFR.
The first of the two papers focusing on the ACTFL Guidelines is written by Pardee Lowe, whose work has been particularly influential in the development of the ACTFL Guidelines in the 1980s (Lowe, 1983, 1986). Lowe discusses several features of the proficiency levels of the ACTFL Guidelines, and argues that despite the similarities of the ACTFL and CEFR descriptors, there is a major distinction between the two frameworks that challenges any attempt to link them: the ACTFL Guidelines were written as a single scale, whereas the CEFR, as a multi-purpose framework, contains several scales. The author concludes by suggesting seven topics that should be addressed in order for any linking to be meaningful. The last paper in Part 2, written by Malone, describes a study investigating the characteristics of tasks and responses at various ACTFL levels. Based on that study, Malone discusses four steps involved in developing a methodology to compare speaking tasks, performances, and ratings on the ACTFL and CEFR scales: selection of test, database and survey development, rater selection and process, and data analysis.
Part 3 contains four “empirical studies trying to establish correlations and correspondences between tests linked to both frameworks and to determine how proficiency develops and the challenges associated with measuring it” (p. 13). Swender, Tschirner, and Barenfanger establish a correspondence for reading by administering a CEFR-aligned test and another ACTFL-aligned test to the same group of examinees. A similar approach is adopted in the second paper in order to identify a correspondence between the two frameworks for the skill of speaking German as second language. The third paper (Slagter, Surface, Watson, and Wilcox) investigates the ACTFL–CEFR correspondence for second language Spanish writing. This study followed a different approach to the two previous studies, in which students self-rated their Spanish L2 writing proficiency by judging how well they could perform in relation to a number of ACTFL and CEFR descriptors. The results were also compared to the actual performance of the respondents on an ACTFL writing test. Overall, these three papers, despite the limitations acknowledged by their authors (i.e. generalizability of findings regarding test takers, language backgrounds, and language skills), offer useful empirical perspectives regarding the ACTFL–CEFR-level correspondence by employing a variety of methodological approaches. The fourth paper, by Moeller and Theiler, is on a different topic from that of the other papers in Part 3. In this mixed-method study, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to explore growth in Spanish writing proficiency, as demonstrated by performance on a single test claimed to be related to the ACTFL Guidelines. This quantitative approach is useful in explaining longitudinal changes in writing; however, the qualitative data analysis in the paper is not systematic, but merely comprises the presentation of writing rubrics, student responses, and rater scores, without addressing any of the research questions.
Overall, this volume is valuable for language teaching and language testing researchers and practitioners whose work involves use of the ACTFL Guidelines or the CEFR or both. The volume demonstrates that correspondence between the two frameworks is not as straightforward as it might seem, despite some clear similarities, which may be attributed to the ACTFL Guidelines being among the scales considered for the initial pool of descriptors in the project that led to the CEFR (North, 2000; North & Schneider, 1998). For language testers in particular, the papers by Kenyon and Chapelle (Part 1), and Lowe (Part 2), constitute an excellent presentation of the theoretical issues pertaining to the alignment of the two frameworks. The papers by Green and Malone (Part 2) and Sweder et al., Mosher, and Slagter et al. (Part 3) offer important methodological guidance to researchers who wish to investigate empirically the ACTFL–CEFR correspondence.
A possible weakness of this volume is that it is not always clear how some papers connect to the editor’s stated theme of the ACTFL–CEFR crosswalk. For instance, the fourth paper in Part 3 (Moeller and Theiler) does not address this theme at all. To a lesser extent, the lack of connection to the ACTFL–CEFR crosswalk is also somewhat evident in the paper by Saville (Part 2), which, as the author states, is primarily intended for readers who are familiar with the ACTFL Guidelines, but not the CEFR. This could also be argued for Little’s paper; therefore, these two papers may not be of interest to all readers of the volume. Finally, it is somewhat disappointing that there is not more discussion in book of the criticism that exists of various aspects of the CEFR: for example, its weak theoretical underpinnings (Alderson, 2007) and its use as a policy tool (Fulcher, 2004; McNamara, 2006). This would have made the book a little more objective and comprehensive in its presentation of the topic.