Preface

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012—Reading describe five major levels of proficiency: Distinguished, Superior, Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice. The description of each major level is representative of a specific range of abilities. Together these levels form a hierarchy in which each level subsumes all lower levels. The major levels Advanced, Intermediate, and Novice are divided into High, Mid, and Low sublevels. The subdivision of the Advanced level is new. This makes the Reading descriptions parallel to the other skill level descriptions.

Reading is an interpretive skill. Reading comprehension is largely based on the amount of information readers can retrieve from a text, and the inferences and connections that they can make within and across texts. By describing the tasks that readers can perform with different types of texts and under different types of circumstances, the Reading Proficiency Guidelines describe how readers read texts and retrieve information. These Guidelines do not describe how reading skills develop, how one learns to read, nor the actual cognitive processes involved in the activity of reading. Rather, they are intended to describe what readers are able to understand from what they read.

The written descriptions of reading proficiency are accompanied online by authentic text samples and the functional reading tasks associated with each major level.

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012—Reading may be used for non-profit, educational purposes only, provided that they are reproduced in their entirety, with no alterations, and with credit to ACTFL.

Distinguished

At the Distinguished level, readers can understand a wide variety of texts from many genres including professional, technical, academic, and literary. These texts are characterized by one or more of the following: a high level of abstraction, precision or uniqueness of vocabulary; density of information; cultural reference; or complexity of structure. Readers are able to comprehend implicit and inferred information, tone, and point of view and can follow highly persuasive arguments. They are able to understand unpredictable turns of thought related to sophisticated topics.

Readers at the Distinguished level are able to understand writing tailored to specific audiences as well as a number of historical, regional, and colloquial variations of the language. These readers are able to appreciate the richness of written language. Distinguished-level readers understand and appreciate texts that use highly precise, low-frequency vocabulary as well as complex rhetorical structures to convey subtle or highly specialized information. Such texts are typically essay length but may be excerpts from more lengthy texts.

Distinguished-level readers comprehend language from within the cultural framework and are able to understand a writer’s use of nuance and subtlety. However, they may still have difficulty fully understanding certain nonstandard varieties of the written language.

View Distinguished Samples

John Simon

“NEVER argue with a fool,” the saying goes. “People might not know the difference.” But is it any smarter to argue with a hypereducated critic? Probably not. And yet, how else to respond to the 2,000-odd pages of the collected waspish writings of John Simon, who lost his longtime perch at New York magazine last May, at the age of 80 (he now reviews for Bloomberg.com) after writing an uncharacteristically positive, gushing review of the musical “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”?

It’s an irony Simon should appreciate: not to have been hoist by his own cafard – as anyone might have expected of a man widely resented for his verbal pistol-whippings of actors, playwrights, directors, plays and even theater audiences – but by a sudden access of Pollyannish sunniness. It’s also an irony he anticipated. In an indulgent review of a production of “Mack & Mabel” in the 1970′s, he noted warily that for an earlier rave of “Sugar,” a musical inspired by the Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot,” “I got more brickbats for liking the show than I usually get for despising one.” Nonetheless, there can be no question that, in toto, the brickbats hurled at Simon for his bushels of raspberries far outnumber the ones he has gotten for his handfuls of plums.

Gathering hundreds of previously published reviews between two covers, on the expectation that someone will want to reread them, is a vexed project. And Simon, a polymath’s polymath, has increased the risk by daring to fill not two but six covers – in three volumes of his opinions on theater, film and music.

[…] Simon’s reviews, while shrewd and wide-ranging, are less rich in diversion than in animadversion; nor are they meant for quick consumption. They provide a 360-degree view of one aesthete’s take on much of what he has watched or listened to over the last three decades, and while they deserve a place on critics’ shelves, they’ll never end up in a beach bag at the Hamptons. Not that in his worst nightmares Simon would ever wish them such a fate.

There can be no doubt of Simon’s erudition or his exacting nature. The director Jack O’Brien writes in the introduction to “John Simon on Theater” that Simon was always “outstripping everyone else in both knowledge, history, reference, and that one element without which any critic can be dismissed as merely a ‘reviewer’: he had standards.”

Certainly, it’s hard not to feel a little awe for a man whose self-confidence is so limitless that he can toss off a sentence like “I have always considered Aeschylus and Sophocles great dramatic poets, but Euripides the first poetic dramatist able to command a modern stage.” Nor is Simon somebody who can be accused of talking down to his readership: he likes to complain about “pleonasm,” “tergiversation” and “hypotaxis,” and has a penchant for coining neologisms like “cacopolitan” (describing the set of “Sweeney Todd” in its Broadway debut), “portophilia” (excessive door-slamming) and “limacine” (to twit the actor Raul Julia, whose “Hispanic accent” he frequently deplored, fueling the common impression in the theater world that Simon’s critical needle swung past bias toward hate).

Rationale for Rating

The readers of this text need to be able to understand a text containing obscure, precise vocabulary and phrases (sudden access of Pollyannish sunniness, polymath’s polymath), puns (hoist by his own cafard–this is a pun on the phrase “hoist on one’s own petard) and rarified cultural references (beach bag at the Hamptons). In addition, readers must be able to understand the author’s implicit point of view and follow a highly-involved argument. The density of information may require readers to reread. In order to grasp fully the richness of the text, readers must be able to process the text within a cultural framework–here, arts criticism–and understand the author’s use of humor, nuance, and subtlety. Only readers at the Distinguished Level will be able to appreciate the artful use and beauty of this language.

Superior

At the Superior Level, readers are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar. Comprehension is no longer limited to the reader’s familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of complex structures and knowledge of the target culture. Readers at the Superior level can draw inferences from textual and extralinguistic clues.

Superior-level readers understand texts that use precise, often specialized vocabulary and complex grammatical structures. These texts feature argumentation, supported opinion, and hypothesis, and use abstract linguistic formulations as encountered in academic and professional reading. Such texts are typically reasoned and/or analytic and may frequently contain cultural references.

Superior-level readers are able to understand lengthy texts of a professional, academic or literary nature. In addition, readers at the Superior level are generally aware of the aesthetic properties of language and of its literary styles, but may not fully understand texts in which cultural references and assumptions are deeply embedded.

View Superior Samples

Google Books

The big issues here are well worth public attention. Should a private corporation (Google) become the librarian for the world’s collected knowledge? Even if it offers to play nice, share revenues, and make books easily accessible now, what about in the future?

Google has scanned about 10 million books so far, with a goal of 40 million or more. For the price of constructing just 60 miles of new highways, the Library of Congress could digitize 10 million books and put them online to be read free of charge in perpetuity by anyone, points out Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive. That nonprofit group has digitized more than a million books itself but lacks the financial resources of Google.

And what about privacy? Google will be capturing information on which books users search for and search within, as well as those they might purchase. What will it do with that information? Information on what people choose to read is sensitive and subject to abuse. The company has promised strong privacy protections under the settlement but has been unwilling so far to spell them out in detail. And no matter how good protections may sound at the outset, what assurance is there that Google’s policy won’t change in the future? These issues plague the Internet in general but have especially important implications here.

The idea of digitizing the world’s written record and making it freely available to everyone is exhilarating. The ability of a student in Alabama or Albania to have access to the contents of the world’s libraries online at their fingertips, for example, is a powerful concept and just one of the ways a free and open Web can lift humanity.

But history shows that when a company – even one with talent and good intentions – acts like a monopoly, it is subject to abuses. Despite the potentially monumental effects of this settlement, it has had little public scrutiny. Yet it needs a rigorous examination.

If it stands, the agreement must include long-term safeguards that allow public access to the full collection at reasonable cost, maintain the rights of copyright holders, and ensure the necessary privacy of those who use the service.

Rationale for Rating

Readers of this text must deal with subject matter that is most likely unfamiliar. Their comprehension comes in part from command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of more complex structures and knowledge of the target culture.

Readers must be able to process a reasoned, thoughtful argument about an abstract topic–copyright, both explicit and implicit–with cultural references (Google, Library of Congress). They must also understand the author’s use of precise and specialized vocabulary (in perpetuity) and complex grammatical structures (And no matter how good protections may sound at the outset, what assurance is there that Google’s policy won’t change in the future?).

Readers at the Superior Level will read to learn from this text and learn from reading it.

Advanced

At the Advanced level, readers can understand the main idea and supporting details of authentic narrative and descriptive texts. Readers are able to compensate for limitations in their lexical and structural knowledge by using contextual clues. Comprehension is likewise supported by knowledge of the conventions of the language (e.g., noun/adjective agreement, verb placement, etc.). When familiar with the subject matter, Advanced-level readers are also able to derive some meaning from straightforward argumentative texts (e.g., recognizing the main argument).

Advanced-level readers are able to understand texts that have a clear and predictable structure. For the most part, the prose is uncomplicated and the subject matter pertains to real-world topics of general interest.

Advanced-level readers demonstrate an independence in their ability to read subject matter that is new to them. They have sufficient control of standard linguistic conventions to understand sequencing, time frames and chronology. However, these readers are likely challenged by texts in which issues are treated abstractly.

View Advanced Samples

Hikers

When New Hampshire lawmakers decided to bill negligent hikers for their rescues, they figured they would solve some budget problems and teach hapless tourists a lesson. Then a 17-year-old Eagle Scout got lost on Mount Washington and ended up with a bill for $25,000.

Now New Hampshire officials, facing possible litigation, are defending a law that hasn’t solved their budget troubles and puts the state at odds with national search-and-rescue groups that say billing hikers is dangerous.

“It certainly has put us on the hot spot,” says Lt. Todd Bogardus, head of search and rescue for the state Fish and Game Department.

Few other states bill those who are rescued — and most of the other laws target skiers who stray off marked slopes.

Oregon caps the amount that can be billed at $500. Hawaii requires there be an “intentional disregard” for safety, and Idaho limits reimbursement to rescues from lands that are closed to the public. A Maine law that permits the state to recover costs of a search and rescue is seldom enforced.

The National Association for Search and Rescue opposes billing for rescue, contending people won’t seek help if they’re afraid they’ll have to pay for it. “The public needs to understand that there’s going to be someone there to help them and you shouldn’t worry about downstream consequences,” spokesman Howard Paul says.

In April, Scott Mason, then a high school junior from Halifax, Mass., set out on a 17-mile day hike in the White Mountains. The popular hiking destination includes Mount Washington, where unpredictable conditions have earned it the title “home of the world’s worst weather.”

Rationale for Rating

Readers of this multi-paragraph text must deal with subject matter that is concrete and likely to be of general interest. Readers process a text that reports the facts of various hiking rescues and the consequences of reimbursement policies in a straightforward and predictable manner. The author uses general vocabulary although there are occasionally words and phrases for which the readers may need to use contextual clues to derive meaning (downstream consequences). While there is a journalistic style that is light-hearted in some cases (hapless tourists), there is no evidence of author’s voice that the readers need to understand.

Readers at the Advanced Level are able to read to learn from this text.

Advanced High

At the Advanced High sublevel, readers are able to understand, fully and with ease, conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as more complex factual material. They are able to follow some of the essential points of argumentative texts in areas of special interest or knowledge. In addition, they are able to understand parts of texts that deal with unfamiliar topics or situations. These readers are able to go beyond comprehension of the facts in a text, and to begin to recognize author-intended inferences. An emerging awareness of the aesthetic properties of language and of its literary styles permits comprehension of a wide variety of texts. Misunderstandings may occur when reading texts that are structurally and/or conceptually more complex.

Advanced Mid

At the Advanced Mid sublevel, readers are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts, such as expanded descriptions of persons, places, and things and narrations about past, present, and future events. These texts reflect the standard linguistic conventions of the written form of the language in such a way that readers can predict what they are going to read. Readers understand the main ideas, facts, and many supporting details. Comprehension derives not only from situational and subject-matter knowledge but also from knowledge of the language itself. Readers at this level may derive some meaning from texts that are structurally and/or conceptually more complex.

Advanced Low

At the Advanced Low sublevel, readers are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure though their comprehension may be uneven. These texts predominantly contain high-frequency vocabulary and structures. Readers understand the main ideas, and some supporting details. Comprehension may often derive primarily from situational and subject-matter knowledge. Readers at this level will be challenged to comprehend more complex texts.

Intermediate

At the Intermediate level, readers can understand information conveyed in simple, predictable, loosely connected texts. Readers rely heavily on contextual clues. They can most easily understand information if the format of the text is familiar, such as in a weather report or a social announcement.

Intermediate-level readers are able to understand texts that convey basic information such as that found in announcements, notices, and online bulletin boards and forums. These texts are non-complex and have a predictable pattern of presentation. The discourse is minimally connected and primarily organized in individual sentences and strings of sentences containing predominantly high-frequency vocabulary.

Intermediate-level readers are most accurate when getting meaning from simple, straightforward texts. They are able to understand messages found in highly familiar, everyday contexts. At this level, readers may not fully understand texts that are detailed or those texts in which knowledge of language structures is essential in order to understand sequencing, time frame, and chronology.

View Intermediate Samples

Blue Vase

Actfl reading intermediate example: Vase (image only)

This is a very large, beautiful vase. There are no chips or cracks. The vase weighs over 9 lbs. This vase looks 100% better in person. Any questions, please ask.

Rationale for Rating

The readers of this text must deal with a straightforward text whose purpose is evident even before they read it. While written in complete sentences, there is very little cohesion among them, which facilitates the readers’ task. The format of the text is predictable and aids the readers’ comprehension.

Novice

At the Novice level, readers can understand key words and cognates, as well as formulaic phrases that are highly contextualized.

Novice-level readers are able to get a limited amount of information from highly predictable texts in which the topic or context is very familiar, such as a hotel bill, a credit card receipt or a weather map. Readers at the Novice level may rely heavily on their own background knowledge and extralinguistic support (such as the imagery on the weather map or the format of a credit card bill) to derive meaning.

Readers at the Novice level are best able to understand a text when they are able to anticipate the information in the text. At the Novice level, recognition of key words, cognates, and formulaic phrases makes comprehension possible.

View Novice Samples

Chevy Advertisement (image only)

Rationale for Rating

The readers of this advertisement must be able to process a highly predictable, loosely organized text with limited cohesion. They may rely heavily on extralinguistic support–here, the picture–to understand the message. This is an example of a text where the readers’ recognition of images, brand names, and numbers leads in part to their comprehension. Novice-level readers are best able to comprehend a text when they are able to anticipate the information in it.

Novice High

At the Novice High sublevel, readers can understand, fully and with relative ease, key words and cognates, as well as formulaic phrases across a range of highly contextualized texts. Where vocabulary has been learned, they can understand predictable language and messages such as those found on train schedules, roadmaps, and street signs. Readers at the Novice High sublevel are typically able to derive meaning from short, non-complex texts that convey basic information for which there is contextual or extralinguistic support.

Novice Mid

At the Novice Mid sublevel, readers are able to recognize the letters or symbols of an alphabetic or syllabic writing system or a limited number of characters in a character-based language. They can identify a number of highly contextualized words and phrases including cognates and borrowed words but rarely understand material that exceeds a single phrase. Rereading is often required.

Novice Low

At the Novice Low sublevel, readers are able to recognize a limited number of letters, symbols or characters. They are occasionally able to identify high-frequency words and/or phrases when strongly supported by context.

Resources by Topic

English Reading

Preface

Distinguished

View Distinguished Samples

Superior

View Superior Samples

Advanced

View Advanced Samples

Advanced High

Advanced Mid

Advanced Low

View Intermediate Samples

View Novice Samples

Novice High

Novice Mid

Novice Low