ACTFL

user:KathrynHin**
 * The following is a draft of the position statements from ACTFL, sent by Marty Abbott, the ACTFL Director of Education. They have yet to be approved.

//*Please feel free to post your thoughts to the discussion board!//


 * ACTFL**[[image:actfl.gif width="368" height="95" align="right" link="http://actfl.org/"]]
 * Position Statements for 2008**

__Approval process to be followed:__ Input from ACTFL’s Assembly of Delegates – Nov 15, 2007 Further input from ACTFL’s Board—November 2007 and May 2008 Input from ACTFL Member Organizations—January through April 2008 Scheduled for Approval by the ACTFL Board of Directors May 2008

__Position Statement on Federal Legislative Priorities__

__Background__: ACTFL frequently receives calls from legislative aides requesting assistance in crafting new legislation or revising existing legislation. It is critical that the Board set priorities for the content of legislative initiatives.

__Recommendation:__ The Board is asked to review the following position statement on legislative priorities for discussion and revisions in order to be proposed to the 2007 Assembly of Delegates:

__Position Statement:__ In developing new federal legislation and/or revising existing legislation, the ACTFL Board of Directors endorses the following initiatives as priorities for the foreign language profession in order to build the nation’s language capacity:

1. Ensure that ALL languages are supported in our educational system, not just the languages that are deemed critical for today. Since research supports the notion that after learning a second language, the third and fourth languages come more easily, it is important to support any language that a school system considers important for its community and for which teachers are available.

2. Encourage and support the creation of articulated, continuous sequences of language courses beginning in the earliest grades and continuing through college, with immersion and language study abroad as key components.

3. Include funding for the development of a consistent program of assessments starting in the earliest grades to measure student progress toward proficiency in foreign languages.

4. Since learning a foreign language increases performance in other core subject areas, make foreign languages truly a part of the core curriculum in every school.

5. Provide assistance to community colleges and universities offering specialized foreign language instruction focused on combining language instruction with other majors, and for special purposes, such as law enforcement, health care, and first responders.

6. Provide incentives to enhance teacher recruitment and retention, such as loan forgiveness, and ensure teacher quality through the teacher education and certification process.

7. Require intensive training for teachers recruited from abroad so they understand how to teach in American schools, and provide professional development for teachers currently in the classroom on how to incorporate standards-based teaching into their curriculum.

8. Develop the skills of our Heritage Language speakers by encouraging the continued learning of their native language as well as English.

9. Fund research into a wide range of areas, including enrollments, best practices, and longitudinal studies to examine the effects of language education on the cognitive development, as well as the academic and career success of students.

10. Provide funding for public education initiatives such as the **//Discover Languages…Discover the World!//** campaign. Policy makers, business leaders, and community leaders need to support efforts to change public attitudes toward foreign language learning.

__Position Statement on Use of the Target Language in the Classroom and Teachers’ Language Proficiency__

__Background:__ This topic for a position statement was ranked first by the organizational members of ACTFL.

__Recommendation:__ The Board is asked to review the following position statement, discuss and revise in order to share a draft with the 2007 Assembly of Delegates for further input.

__Position Statement:__ Given that research indicates that effective language instruction needs to provide significant levels of meaningful communication and interactive feedback in order for students to develop language proficiency, ACTFL urges language educators and their students to use the target language as exclusively as possible during instructional time and even beyond the classroom, as feasible. In order for teachers to be able to carry out instruction in an appropriate and meaningful way, it is recommended those entering the language teaching profession demonstrate, at a minimum, language proficiency at the Advanced Low level for languages that use the Roman alphabet and at the Intermediate-High level for languages that do not use a Roman alphabet. For classical languages and American Sign Language (ASL), the proficiency levels should be commensurate with the national standards developed for these languages.