Revising the revised format of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview

Abstract

Since the early 1980s proponents of proficiency examinations such as ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) have been criticized for the low validity and reliability of tests such as the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview). Despite these strong concerns, the most recent edition of the ACTFL Tester Training Manual (Swender et al., 1999) does not reveal substantial changes from the previous manual published in (Buck et al., 1986). While a complete elimination of proficiency tests such as the ACTFL-OPI may be neither feasible nor necessary, some practical changes may be appropriate. In this article I describe minor structural changes of the ACTFL-OPI framework that would not eliminate the practical benefits of a proficiency test, but which address substantial concerns related to the validity and reliability of the instrument.