Listening and ReadingProficiency Levels ofCollege StudentsErwin TschirnerUniversit€at Leipzig

Abstract: This article examines listening and reading proficiency levels of U.S.college foreign language students at major milestones throughout their undergraduatecareer. Data were collected frommore than 3,000 participants studying seven languagesat 21 universities and colleges across the United States. The results show that whilelistening proficiency appears to develop more slowly, Advanced levels of readingproficiency appear to be attainable for college majors at graduation. The articleexamines the relationship between listening and reading proficiency and suggestsreasons for the apparent disconnect between listening and reading, particularly forsome languages and at lower proficiency levels.

Key words: all languages, proficiency, postsecondary/higher education

IntroductionDespite the fact that the foreign language teaching profession has focused on oralproficiency for decades, reaching the Advanced Low (AL) level in oral proficiencyhas remained “an elusive endeavor” for many college graduates majoring in foreignlanguages, including prospective foreign language instructors (Brooks&Darhower,2014, p. 593). According to Swender (2003, p. 523), only 47% of graduating majorsat prestigious liberal arts colleges, many of whom spent an academic year abroad,were at the AL level or higher, 35% were Intermediate High (IH), and 18% wereIntermediateMid (IM) or lower. AsOmaggio-Hadley (2001) noted, it may take up to720 hours of instruction to reach the Advanced level of foreign language speakingproficiency, an amount of time that is not regularly available in an undergraduateprogram. Rifkin (2005, p. 12) calculated an average of 410 to 415 total hours ofinstruction necessary to complete an undergraduate major in French, German,Russian, or Spanish. In addition, reaching the Advanced level commonly requiresspending a significant amount of time abroad, using the target language both in andoutside of class (Fraga-Ca~nadas, 2010; Schulz, 2002; Sieloff-Magnan&Back, 2007).

Erwin Tschirner (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is Gerhard HelbigProfessor of German as a Foreign Language, Herder Institute, University ofLeipzig, Germany.Foreign Language Annals, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, pp. 201–223. © 2016 by American Council on the Teaching of ForeignLanguages.DOI: 10.1111/flan.12198

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 201

While writing proficiency has receivedsubstantially less attention in languagelearning research (but see, e.g., Bernhardt,Molitoris, Romeo, Lin, & Valderrama,2015), the ACTFL Writing ProficiencyTest developed in 2001 allowed the profes-sion to gauge the development of writingin addition to speaking proficiency. Thisemphasis on the productive modalitiesmay be directly related to the fact thatnational foreign language instructor licens-ing requires achieving AL in speaking andwriting (see e.g., Glisan, 2013; Moeller,2013; Tedick, 2013). As Bernhardt et al.(2015, p. 339) noted, writing proficiencylevels tend to be a little higher than speakingones, with proficiency levels of IM after oneyear of college foreign language instructionin English cognate languages such asFrench, German, and Spanish, and of Inter-mediate Low (IL) in noncognate languagessuch as Arabic, Japanese, and Russian. Aftertwo years, students may reach IH to AL incognate languages and IM in noncognatelanguages.

In contrast, very little is known aboutthe reading and listening proficiency levelsof U.S. college students because untilrecently there were no standardized testsassociated with the ACTFL reading andlistening proficiency guidelines. With thepublication of the ACTFL ProficiencyGuidelines—2012 (ACTFL, 2012), theempirical validation of the reading andlistening Guidelines (Clifford & Cox,2013; Cox & Clifford, 2014), and thedevelopment of the ACTFL Reading(RPT) and Listening Proficiency Tests(LPT; ACTFL, 2013, 2014), it becamepossible to investigate and set benchmarksin reading and listening. This articledescribes the design and reports the resultsof such a study.

Review of Literature

Listening and Reading ProficiencyLevelsCarroll (1967) has commonly been creditedwith having completed the first large-scale

study investigating proficiency levels ofgraduating college foreign language majors.However, as Rifkin (2005, p. 4) pointed out,Carroll used the Modern Language Associ-ation (MLA) Foreign Language ProficiencyTests for Teachers and Advanced Students,a norm-referenced four-skills battery oftests. To establish correlations betweenthe Interagency Language Roundtable(ILR; a proficiency scale aligned withthe ACTFL scale) scale and the MLA test,Carroll (1967, p. 133) conducted a separatestudy with 19 Russian, 30 Spanish, 39French, and 39 German instructor traineeswho were interviewed by teams from theForeign Service Institute (FSI) and whocompleted the FSI reading and speakingtests and also completed the MLA testbattery. The FSI speaking test scores werethen correlated with the MLA speaking andlistening results, and the FSI reading testscores were correlated with the MLA read-ing and writing results. Correlations weremoderately strong for French and Spanish,with 0.67 for French listening and speaking,0.63 for French writing, 0.71 for Frenchreading, 0.66 for Spanish speaking, 0.73for Spanish listening, 0.74 for Spanish read-ing, and 0.77 for Spanish writing (p. 145).Correlations were higher for German andRussian. Carroll’s finding that the averagegraduating senior was ILR 2þ in speakingand listening (equivalent to an ACTFLrating of Advanced Mid or High) and ILR3 in reading and writing (equivalent to anACTFL rating of Superior) can thus onlybe interpreted with extreme caution,particularly because these ratings weremuch higher than those obtained fromsubsequent studies that used ACTFL OralProficiency Interviews (OPIs; e.g., Brecht,Davidson, & Ginsberg, 1993; Magnan,1986; I. Thompson, 1996; Tschirner &Heilenman, 1998).

Rifkin (2005) assessed the listening,reading, speaking, and writing proficiencyof 353 college students attending theMiddlebury Russian School, a 9-week sum-mer immersion program, over the courseof three summers (2001 to 2003). His

202 SUMMER 2016

data yielded ratings for participants at thepoint of entry into the immersion pro-gram, i.e., levels achieved while enrolledin undergraduate programs elsewhere, aswell as postprogram results. Data fromthe preimmersion interviews revealedthat, after 150 hours of previous instruc-tion (approximately one college year),students were Novice High (NH) in allfour modalities. Proficiency levels werelowest for listening, followed by readingand speaking, and highest for writing.After 250 hours of previous instruction(approximately two college years), stu-dents were NH to IL in listening and read-ing and IL in speaking and writing. After350 hours of instruction (approximately3 years of college instruction), they wereIL in listening and reading and Intermedi-ate Mid (IM) in speaking and writing, andafter 450 hours of instruction (approxi-mately four college years), they were IMin listening and reading and IM to Inter-mediate High (IH) in speaking and writ-ing. Only students who had more than600 hours of instruction were rated IHin listening and reading and AL in speak-ing and writing (pp. 8–9). It is interestingto note that preimmersion students gener-ally were weaker in the interpretive than inthe productive modalities. Postimmersionlistening and reading abilities, however,were often higher than speaking and writ-ing ones. Rifkin also presented data fromtraditional classroom instruction at theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, from2000 to 2004, which yielded a mean ofIL in listening and a mean of IM in speak-ing and reading after 4 years of instruction(p. 11).

Schmitt (2016), using the Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency(STAMP),1 found that 45% of French stu-dents were rated NH in reading after threesemesters of college study, 30%were IL, and15% were IM. Students scored substantiallyhigher in writing and speaking, with 75%achieving IL in speaking and 85% achievingIL and IM in writing. Fifty-eight percent ofSpanish students were rated in the Novice

range, 32% were IL, and 10% were IM inreading, while 93% were IL in writing and43% were NH and 50% were IL in speaking(pp. 115–119).

Davin, Rempert, and Hammerand(2014) also used the STAMP to investigatethe development of reading, speaking, andwriting proficiency in secondary schools.The study included 3,881 students, mostof whom studied Spanish (2,166), Chinese(1,058), and French (606) (Davin et al.,2014, pp. 250–251). While the instruc-tional context certainly influenced the re-sults, reading levels for Chinese wereNovice Low (NL) for 86% of all studentstested. The mean score was NL after thefirst 2 years of instruction, reached NoviceMid (NM) after 3 years, and stayed at NMafter as many as 5 years of study. ForFrench, the mean score remained at NMfor the first 3 years and reached IL after4 years of study. For Spanish, the meanscore remained at NM for the first 2 years,reached NH after 3 years and remainedat NH after 4 years. Writing scores inChinese reached IL after 4 years and IMafter 5 years, and participants were ratedIL in French and Spanish after 4 years.Mean speaking scores were IL in Frenchafter 3 and 4 years, in Spanish after 4 years,and in Chinese after 3, 4, and 5 years.

Davidson (2010) described the readingand listening proficiency gains of collegestudents in study abroad programs of vari-ous durations (2-month, 4-month, and9-month programs) in Russia from 1994to 2009. He presented data from 1,234 read-ing assessments and 390 listening assess-ments at both the beginning and end ofthe study abroad period. Students begin-ning a 2-month program were requiredto have a minimum of 2 years of collegeRussian (or equivalent); all others weresupposed to have a minimum of 3 yearsof college Russian (or equivalent). Bothgroups began the program at IH in readingand IM in listening. In reading, at theconclusion of the 2-month program stu-dents advanced to AL, 4-month studentsadvanced to Advanced Mid (AM), and

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 203

9-month students advanced to AdvancedHigh (AH); in listening, 2-month and4-month students advanced only to IH,while only 9-month students crossed theAdvanced-level threshold in substantialnumbers. As Davidson reported, “nullgain was the norm and principal outcomefor 56% of summer students, 46% of semes-ter students, and 15% of academic yearstudents” for listening (p. 16).

Watson and Wolfel (2015), using theDefense Language Proficiency Test and theOPI, looked at listening, reading, and speak-ing proficiency gains of 279 third- andfourth-year students who completed semes-ter-long study abroad programs in 15 differ-ent countries. All students had completed atleast 2 years of college foreign languagestudy or the equivalent before their studyabroad period. Watson and Wolfel dividedstudents into two groups: difficult lan-guages (Arabic, Chinese, and Russian) andless-difficult languages (French, German,Portuguese, and Spanish; pp. 59–60). Atthe beginning of their study abroad period,i.e., after at least 2 years of college foreignlanguage study, students scored 1.69 inreading and 1.79 in listening for difficultlanguages, i.e., somewhat below ILR 0þ(ACTFL NM to NH), and 4.04 in readingand 3.78 in listening for less-difficult lan-guages, i.e., approximately ILR 1þ (ACTFLIM to IH).2

Taken together, the studies that aresummarized above, based on ILR or ACTFLproficiency assessments, indicate that profi-ciency levels in the interpretive modalitiesgenerally appear to be lower than in theproductive ones and are lowest for listeningability, especially in instructed foreign lan-guage learning.

The typical reading proficiency of for-eign language students in the United Statesappears to be between NH and IL after fourhigh school years (Davin et al., 2014) orthree college semesters for closely relatedlanguages such as French or Spanish(Schmitt, 2016). Third- and fourth-yearstudents seem to be IM to IH (1þ) inboth reading and listening in such

languages (Watson & Wolfel, 2015). Inmore distant languages such as Russian,students appear to be NH to IL in readingand listening after 2 years of collegeinstruction, IL after 3 years, and IM after4 years (Rifkin, 2005). In intensive foreignlanguage programs such as The LanguageFlagship (National Security EducationProgram), learners may reach IH in read-ing and IM in listening after 2 to 3 years ofcollege instruction (Davidson, 2010).While preimmersion students may bestronger in their productive modalities,postimmersion students seem to be stron-ger in the interpretive modalities (Rifkin,2005). Even in study abroad contexts,learners appear to make gains more easilyin reading than in listening, with studentsin 2-month and 4-month study abroadprograms lingering in the Intermediaterange and only students who studyabroad for longer periods, e.g., studentsin 9-month programs, advancing to AL(Davidson, 2010).

Correlations Between ModalitiesStudies looking at correlations betweenmodalities have suggested similar conclu-sions. Correlations between listening andreading are usually higher than correla-tions between any other modalities. Liao,Qu, and Morgan (2010) examined the re-lationships between listening, reading,speaking, and writing scores on the Testof English for International Communica-tion (TOEIC). Their data were based onmore than 12,000 examinees in Korea,Japan, and Taiwan. They found a signifi-cant and high correlation between listen-ing and reading (r¼ 0.76) as well assignificant and moderate relationshipsbetween listening and speaking (r¼ 0.66),reading and writing (r¼ 0.61), and speak-ing and writing (r¼ 0.62) (p. 13.4). In’namiand Koizumi (2012) found an even highercorrelation (r¼ 0.87) between the listeningand reading sections on the revised TOEIC2006 for 569 Asian English learners(p. 145).

204 SUMMER 2016

Bozorgian (2012) investigated the rela-tionships between listening, reading, speak-ing, and writing scores of 1,800 Iranianstudents who took the International EnglishLanguage Testing System. He found thatlistening scores had the highest correlationwith reading (r¼ 0.735), while listeningscore correlations with speaking (r¼ 0.654)and writing (r¼ 0.643) were slightly lower.In general, speaking and listening scoreswere considerably lower than reading andwriting ones. On a scale from 1 (nonuser)to 9 (expert user), the listening and speakingmeans were 5.724 and 5.568, respectively,while the reading and writing means were6.987 and 6.564, respectively.

Hirai (1999) compared reading and lis-tening rates (words per minute read or lis-tened to) of 56 Japanese English as a foreignlanguage learners. She divided her learnersinto two groups: a high-proficiency groupdefined as having correctly answered at least75% of multiple-choice content questions,and a low-proficiency group scoring lowerthan 75%. Hirai found that high-proficiencystudents had similar reading and listeningrates (about 140 words per minute),whereas low-proficiency students had dra-matically lower rates, with even lower ratesin listening (54 words per minute) than inreading (61 words per minute). For high-proficiency students, there was a significantand very high correlation between listeningand reading rates (r¼ 0.95); for low-profi-ciency students, the correlation was verylow (r¼ 0.37). Hirai concluded from herdata that listening and reading processesappeared to be highly interactive for high-proficiency students and very different fromeach other for low-proficiency students(pp. 375–378).

One reason for the differences betweenreading and listening proficiency, at least forsome languages, may be orthographic depth(Katz & Frost, 1992). The orthographicdepth hypothesis holds that reading inlanguages such as English or French,whose grapheme–phoneme relationshipsare opaque, requires more morphological(semantic) processing, while reading in

languages such as German or Spanish,whose grapheme–phoneme relationshipsare transparent, requires more phonologicalprocessing (Frost, 2012). Goodwin, August,and Calderon (2015, p. 614) looked at howfourth-grade Spanish-speaking studentsin U.S. classrooms approached reading inSpanish and English and found that phono-logical decoding contributed to readingcomprehension in Spanish, whereas onlymorphological awareness contributed toreading comprehension in English. Stu-dents learning languages with shalloworthographies such as Spanish may beable to relate words learned visually andaurally more readily, and they may evenbe able to transfer words learned in onemodality to the other, whereas studentslearning languages with deep orthogra-phies such as French may not be able totransfer what they have learned visually tolistening.

In summary, the research presentedabove suggests the following hypotheses.While reading and listening proficiencyappear to be highly correlated (Bozorgian,2012; In’nami & Koizumi, 2012; Liaoet al., 2010), listening proficiency levels ingeneral appear to be considerably lowerthan reading proficiency levels and similarto the levels attained for speaking profi-ciency (Bozorgian, 2012). The correlationbetween reading and listening proficiencyappears to increase as learners’ overall pro-ficiency increases, with low correlations atlow proficiency levels and very high corre-lations at high proficiency levels (Hirai,1999). In addition, orthographic depthmay play a role, with languages such asSpanish exhibiting higher correlations be-tween listening and reading than languagessuch as English or French (Frost, 2012;Goodwin et al., 2015).

The studies summarized above pro-vided snapshots of reading and listeningproficiency levels of college or high schoolstudents for a few milestones in a student’slanguage learning career, e.g., after three orfour college semesters or four high schoolyears, for a limited number of languages,

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 205

and for a limited number of schools. Two ofthe studies with the largest number of testsfocused on Russian. None of the studiesused ACTFL proficiency assessments in lis-tening and reading. Taken together, theyseem to indicate that listening and readingproficiency is lower than speaking and writ-ing proficiency in the first two to threecollege years, which appears to be counter-intuitive. One would assume that the inter-pretive skills are generally better developedthan the productive ones. Moreover, theyseem to suggest that overall proficiencylevels of college students, even in closelyrelated languages such as Spanish andFrench, are relatively low, even after 3 to4 years of college foreign language instruc-tion, unless students spent a significantamount of time abroad. The present studysought toadd to this knowledgebasebyusingACTFL proficiency assessments, by includ-ing a large number of students at a largenumber of colleges and universities, byfocusing on all levels of instruction fromthe first to the fourth year, and by increasingthe number of languages taken into account.

Research QuestionsThe main research questions of the presentstudy included the following:

� What levels of reading and listening pro-ficiency can normally be found at majormilestones in an undergraduate foreignlanguage student’s career?

� What is the relationship between readingand listening proficiency?

Methods

ParticipantsStudents from 21 U.S. universities andcolleges participated in the study. ACTFLRPTs and LPTs were administered to first-,second-, third-, and fourth-year studentsover a 12-month period (May 12, 2014–May 13, 2015). Tests taken by instructorswere eliminated, as were incomplete tests.3

This left 3,321 RPTs and 2,932 LPTs thatcould be analyzed.

Due to the large number of colleges andparticipants and the need for anonymity ofstudent participants, demographic dataincluded the name of the institution, lan-guage, course number, test date, test length,and test results. Table 1 shows the numberof tests that were administered at each par-ticipating institution. As shown in Table 1,students at Michigan State University con-tributed more than half of all RPTs andLPTs, and participants from three universi-ties combined contributed 83.4% of allRPTs and 87.9% of all LPTs. The data there-fore are representative primarily of studentswho attend large U.S. state universities.

Table 2 shows the number of RPTs perlanguage and semester. As shown in Table 2,more than half of all students tested werestudents of Spanish. There were also sizablenumbers of test takers in French andGerman, and fewer in Italian, Japanese,Portuguese, and Russian. However, partic-ipants were distributed unevenly acrosssemester levels. For the analysis, fifth- andsixth-semester students were identified asthird-year students for all languages exceptFrench and Spanish to yield adequate num-bers for analysis at the combined level. Agroup of students at one university werereturning missionaries who spent 2 yearsabroad before entering university. Thesestudents are treated separately.

Table 3 shows the number of LPTs perlanguage and class level. Because of thediscrepancy between Spanish and Frenchon the one hand and all other languageson the other, the Results section hereinfocuses first on Spanish and French andthen on the other languages. In addition,Spanish and French are also the languagesused to address the research questions.For all other languages, mostly descriptivestatistics are provided.

InstrumentThe RPT and LPT are standardized testsfor the global assessment of reading and

206 SUMMER 2016

TABLE 1

Number and Percentage of RPTs and LPTs by Institution

Institution RPTN

RPTPercentage

LPTN

LPTPercentage

Michigan State University 1,693 51 1,625 55.4University of Utah 569 17.1 494 16.8University of Minnesota 506 15.3 461 15.7University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire 83 2.5Georgia Southern University 59 1.8 50 1.7Hunter College 53 1.6 9 .3University of Delaware 50 1.5 46 1.6Grand Valley State University 34 1.0 34 1.2University of California, Berkeley 33 1.0Eastern Washington University 31 0.9 33 1.1Lee University 27 0.8 27 0.9North Carolina State University 27 0.8 25 0.9Loras College 27 0.8 18 0.6State University of New York,

Plattsburgh26 0.8 18 0.6

San Diego State University 24 0.7 24 0.8University of Maryland, College Park 23 0.7 14 0.5Bowdoin College 18 0.5University of Southern California 18 0.5 24 0.8Old Dominion University 13 0.4 13 0.4Yale University 6 0.2 4 0.1University of Pittsburgh 13 0.4Total 3,321 100 2,932 100

TABLE 2

Number of RPTs by Semester and Language

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2 YearsAbroad

Total

French 120 86 215 166 62 124 773German 22 178 75 18 38 11 342Italian 73 8 24 17 2 7 131Japanese 33 36 13 13 95Portuguese 13 28 9 9 59Russian 8 25 52 2 20 45 152Spanish 242 222 338 432 208 242 85 1,769Total 489 363 871 701 319 469 109 3,321

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 207

listening ability in a language (ACTFL,2013, 2014). They measure how well a per-son spontaneously reads or is able to listento texts and discourse when presented withtexts, discourse, and tasks as described inthe ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012.Each test consists of 10 to 25 reading textsor listening passages depending on thelevels tested. There are five sublevels: IL,IM, AL, AM, and Superior (S). Each sublevelconsists of five reading texts or listeningpassages accompanied by three tasks(items) with four multiple-choice re-sponses, only one of which is correct. Testrubrics include genre, content area, rhetor-ical organization, reader/listener purpose,vocabulary, and for LPTs clarity of speech.Texts/passages and tasks align at each level:e.g., an Intermediate task requires under-standing information that is contained inone sentence/utterance, whereas Advancedtasks require the ability to understand in-formation that is spread out over severalsentences/utterances. Tasks and multiple-choice responses are in the target language(Institute for Test Research and Test Devel-opment, 2013a, 2013b).

The RPT and LPT are timed tests with atotal test time of 25 minutes per sublevel.Test takers usually take two to three sub-levels at the same time. Two sublevels arerated together: either the two levels taken,or, if more than two levels were taken, thetwo highest levels that can be rated

according to the specific algorithm of thetest. The algorithm and cut points for eachlevel were determined empirically. Becausethere are no Novice texts/passages andtasks, the Novice levels are determinedaccording to how close the test taker is tothe Intermediate level. The test is Internet-administered and computer-scored (Institutefor Test Research and Test Development,2013a, 2013b).

The sublevels that the test takersworked on were selected by the participat-ing schools in consultation with theACTFL. Most schools selected two-subleveltests to fit a standard 50-minute class ses-sion. Because so little was known about theaverage proficiency levels of students hav-ing studied a particular language for a cer-tain number of semesters, the tests selectedwere sometimes too difficult for weakerstudents, which resulted in a relatively largenumber of below-range (BR) ratings forsome languages in some semesters, espe-cially for listening. A BR rating is givenwhen there is not enough evidence to assignthe lowest rating of a particular two-sub-level test. In addition, some of the beststudents may have been at a higher sublevelthan the top sublevel the test could verify.

AnalysesLength of study in semesters was deter-mined by aligning course numbers across

TABLE 3

Number of LPTs by Semester and Language

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2 YearsAbroad

Total

French 111 88 203 141 89 121 753German 1 5 151 3 27 31 11 229Italian 37 8 23 12 7 7 94Portuguese 12 26 7 9 54Russian 8 25 51 1 19 40 144Spanish 235 209 317 382 187 233 85 1,658Total 404 335 771 556 338 432 96 2,932

208 SUMMER 2016

the various institutions. Length of studyin classroom hours was determined bycalculating the number of previous con-tact hours students would have had ifthey had attended each class session andcompleted the required courses up to thecurrent course in which they were en-rolled at their particular institution.Then, the number of contact hours thatstudents had completed in the course inwhich they were enrolled when the testwas administered was added to the previ-ous total, yielding a total number of class-room (instructional) hours. The totalnumber of classroom hours was not cal-culated for the students who spent 2 yearsabroad.

Following Rifkin (2005) and others,test results were coded numerically asfollows: NL¼ 1, NM¼ 2, NH¼ 3, IL¼ 4,IM¼ 5, and so on, up to S¼ 10. For anumber of cases, it was not possible toassign an ACTFL rating because the assess-ment chosen by the instructor was abovethe ability level of the student. In suchcases, BR was assigned. Table 4 showsthe percentage of BR for RPTs and LPTsfor all languages. The percentage of BRratings was particularly high for RussianRPTs and LPTs, for Japanese RPTs, andfor French and Portuguese LPTs. Thesenumbers indicate that there was a discrep-ancy between the levels at which someteachers expected their students toperform and students’ actual proficiencylevels. This was particularly noticeable onthe LPT for all languages except Italian.On the RPT, instructors’ expectationsseemed to be more accurate with respectto Romance languages than with German,Japanese, and Russian, and in listening,they were accurate only with respect toItalian. For the results section, BR wascoded as 0. Note that this lowered themeans slightly. However, eliminatingBR ratings, and thus eliminating weakstudents, would greatly inflate mean pro-ficiency levels in languages and semestersin which BR ratings accounted for a largenumber of the ratings.

TABLE4

PercentageofBRRatingsperRPTsandLPTsperLanguage

Lan

guage

French

German

Italian

Japan

ese

Portugu

ese

Russian

Span

ish

Total

RPT

3.5

14.0

1.5

14.7

3.4

15.8

5.3

6.4

LPT

16.7

11.8

4.3

–14

.822

.99.0

11.8

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 209

Results

Reading and Listening ProficiencyLevels of French and SpanishStudents at Major MilestonesIn general, the reading and listening profi-ciency of French and Spanish studentsincreased the longer they studied their re-spective languages. Figure 1 shows themean4 ACTFL reading and listening profi-ciency ratings of students in their second,third, fourth, fifth, and sixth semesters, andin their fourth year of college foreign lan-guage study. As Figure 1 shows, there werelarge differences between reading andlistening proficiency in both French andSpanish. In reading, French and Spanishstudents started at NH (3) and developedin a similar fashion to AL (7) in the fourthyear, with French reading abilities slightlyabove Spanish ones, except for the slightdrop for French students after the sixthsemester going into the fourth year. In lis-tening, French and Spanish students startedat NM (2) and also developed similarly untilthe fourth semester, when they reached NH

(3). Starting in the fifth semester, Spanishstudents had considerably higher proficien-cies. Because there was a sharp drop forFrench students after the sixth semestergoing into the fourth year, the differencebetween French and Spanish increased sub-stantially, a difference of well over two sub-levels, between IL (4) in French and IH (6)in Spanish.

Table 5 shows mean ACTFL ratingsexpressed numerically and standard devia-tions for each language and semester or yearfor all RPTs and LPTs with the number ofcases in parentheses. As Table 5 shows,there was a steady increase in mean abilityfrom the second semester to the sixthsemester. While Spanish also showed anincrease going into the fourth year, therewas a slight drop in French reading anda considerable drop in French listening.Listening proficiency levels were substan-tially lower than reading levels for bothFrench and Spanish. While Spanish listen-ing levels were approximately one sublevellower than Spanish reading levels, Frenchlistening ability started at a little more than

FIGURE 1

Mean Proficiency Ratings for French and Spanish RPTs and

LPTs by Semester

210 SUMMER 2016

one sublevel lower than French readingability, increased to two sublevels lower inthe fourth semester and throughout thethird year, and reached two and a halfsublevels lower in the fourth year. Return-ing missionaries who spent 2 years in aSpanish-speaking country had slightlyhigher reading and considerably higherlistening proficiencies than regular fourth-year Spanish students. It is interesting tonote that the difference between modalitiesfor these students was less than one half ofone sublevel.

Table 6 shows the ACTFL sublevelsthat correspond to the mean numeric rat-ings in Table 5. The plus symbol is used toindicate that the mean numeric rating isbetween 0.35 and 0.74 higher than thebase level. Mean numeric ratings of 0.75and above are rounded up to the next higherlevel. As shown in Table 6, French andSpanish students were rated NHþ, on aver-age, in reading in the third semester, and IMin the fifth semester. They began movinginto the IH and IHþ ranges in the sixthsemester, on average, and reached IHþand AL in the fourth year. Spanish studentswho spent 2 years in a Spanish-speakingcountry read at the same level as regularfourth-year students. In listening, Spanishstudents moved into the Intermediate rangein the fifth semester and reached the IH levelin the fourth year. French students, onaverage, seemed to find it very difficult toreach IM even in their fourth year. Spanishstudents who spent 2 years abroad wererated AL, on average, the same as in reading.

To examine the effect of number ofsemesters on proficiency, separate ANOVAswere calculated by language (Frenchand Spanish) and modality (reading andlistening).

For Spanish reading (N¼ 1,684), theANOVA found a significant effect of semes-ter number on proficiency (F[5,1678]¼161.606, p< 0.001). Number of semestersexplained 32.5% of the variance in profi-ciency (partial eta squared¼ 0.325). TheScheff�e test (0.05) yielded five homoge-neous subsets. Second and third semesters

TABLE5

MeanACTFLRatingsandStandard

DeviationsforFrenchandSpanishRPTsandLPTsW

ithN

inParenth

eses

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2Years

Abroad

French

RPT

2.94

,1.27

(120

)3.63

,1.28

(86)

4.52

,1.45

(215

)5.29

,2.20

(166

)6.65

,1.52

(62)

6.56

,1.83

(124

)Sp

anishRPT

3.11

,1.35

(242

)3.37

,1.43

(222

)4.09

,1.64

(338

)5.26

,2.45

(432

)6.30

,2.16

(208

)6.94

,1.87

(242

)7.31

,1.31

(85)

French

LPT

1.83

,0.90

(111

)2.39

,1.16

(88)

2.65

,1.63

(203

)3.48

,2.51

(141

)4.58

,2.70

(89)

4.04

,2.69

(121

)Sp

anishLPT

2.05

,1.17

(235

)2.52

,1.45

(209

)2.83

,1.59

(317

)4.39

,2.44

(392

)5.13

,2.37

(187

)6.00

,1.92

(233

)7.08

,0.58

(85)

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 211

constituted one subset. Fourth, fifth, andsixth semesters and fourth year formedindividual subsets. This indicates that therewere no significant differences betweensecond and third semesters, but therewere significant differences between third,fourth, fifth, and sixth semesters and fourthyear, representing a statistically significantmean progression from NHþ (third semes-ter) to IL (fourth semester) to IM (fifthsemester) to IH (sixth semester) and AL(fourth year).

For French reading (N¼ 773), the AN-OVA found a significant effect of semesternumber on proficiency (F[5,767]¼ 85.086,p< 0.001). Number of semesters explained35.7% of the variance in proficiency (partialeta squared¼ 0.357). The Scheff�e test(0.05) yielded four homogeneous subsets.Second and third semesters formed subset1. Fourth and fifth semesters formed indi-vidual subsets. Sixth semester and fourthyear formed subset 4. There was a statisti-cally significant mean progression fromNHþ (third semester) to ILþ (fourth se-mester) to IM (fifth semester) and IHþ(sixth semester).

For Spanish listening (N¼ 1,573), theANOVA found a significant effect of semes-ter number on proficiency (F[5,1567]¼160.734, p< 0.001). Number of semestersexplained 33.9% of the variance in profi-ciency (partial eta squared¼ 0.339). TheScheff�e test (0.05) yieldedfive homogeneoussubsets. Second and third semesters formedsubset 1. Third and fourth semestersformed subset 2. Fifth and sixth semestersand fourth year formed three individual

subsets. There was a statistically signifi-cant mean progression from NH (fourthsemester) to ILþ (fifth semester) to IM(sixth semester) and IH (fourth year).

For French listening (N¼ 753), theANOVA found a significant effect of semes-ter number on proficiency (F[5,747]¼28.079, p< 0.001). Number of semestersexplained only 15.8% of the variance inproficiency (partial eta squared¼ 0.158).The Scheff�e test (0.05) yielded four homo-geneous subsets. Second, third, and fourthsemesters formed subset 1, fourth and fifthsemesters formed subset 2, fifth semesterand fourth year formed subset 3, and sixthsemester and fourth year constituted subset4. While there was a mean progression fromNM (second semester) to NMþ (third andfourth semesters) to NHþ (fifth semester)and ILþ (sixth semester), the only statisti-cally significant progression was from fifthto sixth semester. Note that the mean profi-ciency of fourth-year students was lowerthan the sixth-semester mean.

To get a better sense of the range ofstudent proficiency levels at various mile-stones, Table 7 shows the range of ACTFLlevels within one standard deviation of themean. This represents the range of profi-ciency levels of the mid 68.2% of test takers.As Table 7 shows, the top 16% (84th per-centile) of Spanish students read at IM orhigher in the third and fourth semesters andat AL or higher in the fifth semester. In thesixth semester, they read at the AMþ level,as did students who returned from 2 yearsabroad. In the fourth year, they read atthe AH level. The 84th percentile of French

TABLE 6

Mean ACTFL Ratings for French and Spanish RPTs and LPTs

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2 YearsAbroad

French RPT NH NHþ ILþ IM IHþ IHþSpanish RPT NH NHþ IL IM IH AL ALFrench LPT NM NMþ NMþ NHþ ILþ ILSpanish LPT NM NMþ NH ILþ IM IH AL

212 SUMMER 2016

students had similar abilities in reading asthe Spanish students. In listening, the 84thpercentile of Spanish students reached theAL level as early as the fifth semester, whilethe same percentile of French students didnot reach it before the sixth semester andwere below AL in the fourth year. Of partic-ular significance is that even the 84th per-centile of both French and Spanish studentswere at the IL/ILþ levels in listening as lateas the fourth semester. Note that becausethere were so many BR ratings in Frenchlistening, the bottom 16% of French stu-dents were BR in the fifth and sixth semes-ters and in the fourth year. This discrepancybetween reading and listening levels didnot apply to students who had spent 2 yearsabroad (returning missionaries). Theirlistening levels were only marginally lowerthan their reading levels. Note that theirstandard deviations were also low, andparticularly low in listening, which indi-cates that they formed a homogeneousgroup with very similar proficiency ratings.

Reading and Listening Levels ofGerman, Italian, Portuguese, andRussian Students at Major MilestonesThere were substantially fewer test takers inGerman, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, andRussian than there were in French andSpanish, and they were unevenly distrib-uted across class levels. For a number ofclass levels, there were not enough test tak-ers. To generate more substantial numbers,fifth and sixth semesters were combinedinto third year. Table 8 shows the ACTFLnumerical ratings, the standard deviations,and the number of tests in parentheses inGerman, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, andRussian for all semesters and years forwhich there were more than 10 tests. Thetable provides a heterogeneous picture, un-doubtedly due to the often very small num-bers and, for German, Japanese, and Russianas well as Portuguese listening, due to therelatively large number of BR ratings. Ingeneral, German, Italian, and Portuguesestudents were IL or IM in reading and NH

TABLE7

RangeofACTFLPro

ficiencyLevels

forFrenchandSpanishRPTsandLPTsW

ithin

OneStandard

Deviationofth

eMean

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2Years

Abroad

French

RPT

NLþ

�IL

NMþ

�IM

NH

�IH

NH

�ALþ

IM�

AM

ILþ

�AMþ

SpanishRPT

NM

�ILþ

NM

�IM

NMþ

�IM

þNH

�ALþ

IL�

AMþ

IM�

AH

IH�

AMþ

French

LPT

NL�

NMþ

NL�

NHþ

NL�

ILBR�

IHBR�

AL

BR�

IHþ

SpanishLPT

NL�

NH

NL�

ILNL�

ILþ

NM

�AL

NH

�ALþ

IL�

AM

IHþ

�ALþ

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 213

TABLE8

MeanACTFLRatingsandStandard

DeviationsforGerm

an,Italian,Japanese,Portuguese,andRussianRPTandLPTW

ith

Nin

Parenth

esesforSemesters

andYears

WithMore

Than10Tests

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

3rdYear

4thYear

2Years

Abroad

German

RPT

4.00

,1.85

(22)

4.33

,1.45

(178

)4.11

,3.15

(93)

5.45

,2.29

(38)

6.64

,2.38

(11)

ItalianRPT

3.42

,1.17

(73)

4.12

,1.04

(24)

6.68

,1.94

(19)

JapaneseRPT

1.61

,1.03

(33)

3.03

,1.36

(36)

3.31

,2.75

(13)

Portugu

eseRPT

3.54

,1.56

(13)

5.36

,1.97

(28)

6.89

,0.68

(18)

RussianRPT

1.64

,1.04

(25)

3.13

,1.57

(52)

5.09

,2.14

(22)

3.69

,4.04

(45)

German

LPT

2.96

,1.72

(151

)4.53

,3.17

(30)

5.26

,2.28

(31)

7.45

,.69(11)

ItalianLPT

3.89

,1.08

(37)

4.04

,1.15

(23)

7.14

,3.29

(19)

Portugu

eseLPT

2.50

,1.88

(12)

3.42

,2.04

(26)

5.13

,2.16

(16)

RussianLPT

1.72

,1.21

(25)

2.88

,1.32

(51)

4.40

,2.87

(20)

1.70

,2.87

(40)

214 SUMMER 2016

or IL in listening in their fourth semester. Inthe third year, students were IH and AL inreading and listening in the Romance lan-guages except for Portuguese listening,where students continued to be IM, on av-erage. As was the case with the Spanishstudents who spent 2 years abroad on amission, returning missionaries who werein a German-speaking country were Ad-vanced in listening. Note again the verylow standard deviation, which indicatesthat they were a very homogeneous group.

Reading and ListeningBecause most students took both readingand listening tests, particularly at the threeuniversities that contributed 83% of thereading and 88% of the listening test takers(Michigan State University, University ofMinnesota, and University of Utah), therelationship between reading and listeningwas examined to see if reading and listeningproficiencies developed in tandem or sepa-rately. In addition, the number of classroomhours needed to reach particular profi-ciency levels is considered.

Table 9 shows the overall and language-specific descriptive statistics of proficiencylevels expressed numerically for RPTs andLPTs. As Table 9 shows, the listening meanswere considerably lower than the readingmeans except for Italian, and to some extentfor Russian. The difference in means washighest for French and Portuguese, 1.67and 1.64, respectively, equivalent to morethan one and a half sublevels, followed bySpanish and German, 0.92 and 0.87, respec-tively, equivalent to a little less than onesublevel. The difference in means was0.47 in Russian, less than one half-sublevel,and it was close to 0 in Italian.

Table 10 shows the overall and lan-guage-specific correlation coefficients be-tween ACTFL reading and listeningproficiency ratings. Both parametric Pear-son’s r and a nonparametric Spearman’s rhowere used to compute these correlations.The effect size, R2, was also computed. AsTable 10 shows, all correlations were signif-icant at p< 0.01. Effect sizes above 0.25 areconsidered to be large (Larson-Hall, 2010,p. 162). All effect sizes were larger than

TABLE 9

Overall and Language-Specific ACTFL Proficiency Ratings for RPTs and LPTs

Including N, Minimum, Maximum, Mean, Standard Deviation, and

Standard Error

Assessment Language N Minimum Maximum Mean SD SE

RPT All 2,452 0 10 4.74 2.15 0.043French 638 0 9 4.77 1.94 0.077German 187 0 8 4.53 1.70 0.124Italian 62 1 8 4.23 1.60 0.204Portuguese 53 0 8 5.43 1.72 0.236Russian 107 0 10 3.08 2.34 0.226Spanish 1,405 0 10 4.87 2.24 0.060

LPT All 2,452 0 8 3.65 2.28 0.046French 638 0 8 3.10 2.10 0.083German 187 0 8 3.66 2.16 0.158Italian 62 1 8 4.21 1.32 0.168Portuguese 53 0 7 3.79 2.20 0.302Russian 107 0 8 2.61 2.09 0.202Spanish 1,405 0 8 3.95 2.35 0.063

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 215

0.25, with Italian, Portuguese, Russian, andSpanish being the largest, explaining 49%and more of the variance between readingand listening.

To provide an additional perspective,Table 11 shows the differences in meanACTFL ratings between reading and listen-ing for class levels with 20 or more testtakers. Means and standard deviationswere calculated on the basis of all universi-ties, not only the top three. As Table 11shows, mean listening levels were generallylower than mean reading levels, with sub-stantial differences between languages.The difference was lowest in Italian. Inthe second semester, students’ proficiencyin listening was actually 0.47 ACTFLsublevels higher than in reading, andin the fourth semester, the difference wasclose to zero. For Portuguese, reading pro-ficiency was 1.94 sublevels higher thanlistening proficiency in the fourth semester.Portuguese listening was still NHþ, whilePortuguese reading was IMþ. For German,the difference in the fourth semester was1.37, while it was only 0.19 in the fourthyear. For Russian, there was essentially nodifference in the third semester, while itwas a low 0.25 in the fourth semester.The difference in the fourth year of 1.99was an anomaly, because 72.5% of thelistening ratings were BR.

In Spanish, students’ listening profi-ciency was generally one sublevel lower

than their reading proficiency, NM vs. NHin the second and third semester, NH vs. ILin the fourth semester, IL vs. IM in the fifthsemester, IM vs. IH in the sixth semester,and IH vs. AL in the fourth year. Mostsignificant, the difference between listeningand reading was only 0.23 for students whospent 2 years in the target country.

In French, the differences between lis-tening and speaking were much more pro-nounced. In semesters two and three thedifferences were 1.11 and 1.24, respectively.In semesters four, five, and six, the differ-ences were 1.87, 1.81, and 2.07. And in thefourth year, the difference was a whopping2.52.

Further evidence for the gap betweenreading and listening proficiency for somelanguages was provided when the meanlength of time to reach a particular ACTFLsublevel was considered. Table 12 showsthe mean length of time and standard devi-ation needed to reach a particular ACTFLsublevel with the number of students inparentheses. Only cells in the table with atleast 20 students are filled in. The numberswere not sufficient for Portuguese andRussian to compare reading and listeningproficiency. For Japanese, only readingdata were available and therefore were notincluded. As Table 12 shows, it took longerto reach a particular proficiency rating inlistening than in reading for all languagesand for all proficiency levels. To attain an

TABLE 10

Overall and Language-Specific Correlation Coefficients Between ACTFL

Reading and Listening Proficiency Levels

N Spearman’s rho p Pearson’s r R2 p

All Languages 2,452 0.695 0.01 0.669 0.45 0.01French 638 0.619 0.01 0.614 0.38 0.01German 187 0.591 0.01 0.545 0.30 0.01Italian 62 0.760 0.01 0.783 0.61 0.01Portuguese 53 0.731 0.01 0.729 0.53 0.01Russian 107 0.709 0.01 0.746 0.56 0.01Spanish 1405 0.739 0.01 0.700 0.49 0.01

216 SUMMER 2016

TABLE11

Differencesin

MeanACTFLRatingsBetw

eenReadingandListening,IncludingMeansandStandard

DeviationsW

ith

NumberofTests

inParenth

eses

2ndSem.

3rdSem.

4thSem.

5thSem.

6thSem.

4thYear

2Years

Abroad

French

RPT

2.94

,1.27

(120

)3.63

,1.28

(86)

4.52

,1.45

(215

)5.29

,2.19

(166

)6.65

,1.52

(62)

6.56

,1.83

(124

)French

LPT

1.83

,0.90

(111

)2.39

,1.16

(88)

2.65

,1.63

(203

)3.48

,2.51

(141

)4.58

,2.70

(89)

4.04

,2.68

(121

)Sp

anishRPT

3.11

,1.35

(242

)3.27

,1.43

(222

)4.09

,1.64

(338

)5.26

,2.45

(432

)6.30

,2.16

(208

)6.94

,1.87

(242

)7.31

,1.31

(85)

SpanishLPT

2.05

,1.17

(235

)2.52

,1.45

(209

)2.83

,1.59

(317

)4.39

,2.44

(392

)5.13

,2.37

(187

)6.00

,1.92

(233

)7.08

,0.58

(85)

German

RPT

4.33

,1.45

(178

)5.45

,2.29

(38)

German

LPT

2.96

,1.72

(155

)5.26

,2.28

(31)

ItalianRPT

3.42

,1.17

(73)

4.13

,1.04

(24)

ItalianLPT

3.89

,1.08

(37)

4.04

,1.15

(23)

Portugu

eseRPT

5.36

,1.97

(28)

Portugu

eseLPT

3.42

,2.04

(26)

RussianRPT

1.64

,1.04

(25)

3.13

,1.57

(52)

3.69

,4.04

(45)

RussianLPT

1.72

,1.21

(25)

2.88

,1.32

(51)

1.70

,2.87

(40)

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 217

NH rating, it took French students an addi-tional 42 hours, for IL an additional 55hours, and for IM an additional 59 hours.To attain an IL rating, it took Germanstudents an additional 15 hours and Italianstudents an additional 4 hours; for IM,German students needed an additional42 hours, and Italian students an additional25 hours. To attain a NH rating in listeningproficiency, Spanish students needed anadditional 33 hours, for IL an additional27 hours, and for IM an additional 41 hours.

To attain an IH rating in listening pro-ficiency, it took French students an addi-tional 23 hours and Spanish students anadditional 30 hours; for AL, it took Frenchstudents an additional 15 hours, Germanstudents an additional 34 hours, and Span-ish students an additional 78 hours. For anAM in listening proficiency, it took Spanishstudents an additional 90 hours. While theactual numbers are an artifact of the presentstudy, because of its assumption that class-room hours can be added up, the differencebetween hours needed to reach an equiva-lent proficiency level in listening and read-ing supports the finding that it took longer,in some instances quite a bit longer, to attainlistening proficiency levels than to attainthe same level in reading. Especially strikingwas the difference between listeningand reading in French at NH, IL, and IM:It took students 25%more hours of instruc-tion to reach NH, 30% to reach IL, and26% to reach IM.

DiscussionThe mean reading proficiency in Englishcognate languages such as French and Span-ish was NHþ in the third semester, IL orILþ in the fourth semester, IM in the fifthsemester, IH or IHþ in the sixth semester,and IHþ or AL in the fourth year. Theseproficiency levels were considerably higherthan the ones reported previously. If onelooks at the top 84th percentile of students,they were even higher: Both French andSpanish students were IM in the third se-mester, ALþ as early as the fifth semester,

TABLE12

MeanLength

ofTim

e(95%

TrimmedMean)andStandard

Deviation,W

ithNumberofStu

dents

inParenth

esesNeeded

toReachaParticularACTFLSublevel

Lan

guage/Test

NL

NM

NH

ILIM

IHAL

AM

French

RPT

139,

50(35)

132,

43(49)

169,

64(63)

183,

71(145

)23

1,62

(159

)28

0,60

(86)

314,

66(155

)32

7,52

(48)

French

LPT

145,

53(99)

147,

53(82)

211,

75(122

)23

8,63

(107

)29

0,62

(91)

303,

61(60)

329,

68(58)

German

RPT

248,

54(21)

227,

40(75)

246,

61(82)

306,

56(48)

331,

67(45)

German

LPT

222,

13(20)

224,

27(23)

242,

31(46)

288,

56(24)

365,

153(26)

ItalianRPT

149,

52(34)

148,

56(40)

186,

68(22)

ItalianLPT

152,

56(27)

213,

77(28)

SpanishRPT

144,

51(100

)14

3,56

(80)

160,

68(159

)18

0,67

(293

)22

9,76

(294

)27

5,68

(160

)31

4,81

(343

)35

5,82

(212

)Sp

anishLPT

140,

55(219

)16

0,57

(147

)19

3,75

(176

)20

7,76

(214

)27

0,73

(230

)30

5,11

0(180

)39

2,16

4(281

)44

5,17

6(55)

218 SUMMER 2016

and AM or AMþ in the sixth semester. Inthe fourth year, they were AMþ in Frenchand AH in Spanish. Despite the limitedamount of data for Italian and Portuguese,their proficiency levels were similar to thosereported for Spanish, while proficiencylevels in German appeared to be similar toFrench.

Listening proficiency, however, seemedto be a different matter entirely. One of themost significant findings of the presentstudy was the fact that listening proficiencywas lower than reading proficiency at al-most all levels of instruction and across alllanguages. The mean listening proficiencyin French and Spanish was generally onesublevel lower than the mean reading profi-ciency in the second and third year, and itwas two sublevels lower in the fourth year.

This may be a reflection of what theprofession considers important in foreignlanguage education. As a panel of expertsnoted in a recent accreditation procedure inwhich the present author took part, listen-ing proficiency is not considered importantenough for college credits to be given on thebasis of an examination.While the literaturefaculty in foreign language departmentsmay still focus on reading, the emphasison input and listening comprehensionthat characterized the early years of thecommunicative competence revolution inthe late 1970s and 1980s appears to haveall but disappeared. The focus on speaking,and particularly on interpersonal speaking,ushered in by the proficiency movement inthe late 1980s and 1990s and the fact thatthe first ACTFL assessment that was madeavailable was the OPI may have contributedto the neglect of listening comprehensioneven at the lower levels of language instruc-tion. This may explain the finding in theliterature review—the productive skills ap-pear to be stronger at the lower levels offoreign language instruction (Davin et al.,2014; Rifkin, 2005; Schmitt, 2016).

Listening proficiency was lower inFrench than in Spanish at all levelsof instruction except in the second andthird semesters. The discrepancy between

listening and reading for Frenchmay be dueto its deep orthography (Frost, 2012). Deeporthography languages have an opaquewriting system, in which it is not easy toinfer the pronunciation of a syllable or wordby the way it is written. Words, therefore,need to be learned twice, as visual and auralentities, and words learned visually are noteasily accessible when listening. Listeningand reading proficiency, therefore, diverge,and gains made in reading may not translateto listening.

The lack of continued development oflistening proficiency in French beyond thesecond year may have also been due toupper-division courses being taught inEnglish. This, of course, may be exactlythe kind of vicious circle that solidifiesthe status quo, when instruction is in En-glish because students’ listening proficiencyis judged to be not sufficiently developed.Moreover, stagnating listening proficiencydevelopment as students enter upper-divi-sion courses may be a contributing factor tothe often noted Advanced barrier in oralproficiency, a level that appears to be verydifficult to attain for students who do notspend a significant amount of time in thetarget country (Davidson, 2010). As Rifkin(2005) found, postimmersion studentsshowed greater ability in listening and read-ing, contrasting their stronger skills inspeaking andwriting prior to the immersionexperience. Davidson (2010) found thatattaining Advanced-level listening profi-ciency took the equivalent of a 9-monthstudy abroad period.

Moreover, it may be important todistinguish between local and global com-prehension, and between careful andexpeditious reading and listening (Weir& Khalifa, 2008). While global and expe-ditious reading—and listening, for thatmatter—may be the kind that is mostvalued in literature classes, and even inlower-division language courses, it maybe the local and careful reading with itsattention to detail, including lexical andgrammatical detail, that may be requiredto develop higher levels of proficiency.

Foreign Language Annals � VOL. 49, NO. 2 219

This seems to call for a renewed effort tobetter understand the relationship betweenvocabulary breadth and depth and readingand listening proficiency, including theability to parse incoming informationgrammatically.

A number of textual features have beenidentified as crucial to text comprehension,including vocabulary load, syntactic com-plexity, domain, and genre, among others(Bernhardt, 2011; Jeon & Yamashita, 2014;Vandergrift & Baker, 2015; Van Zeeland,2014). While there may be some overarch-ing principles that relate to all languages,many of these features may be languagespecific and thus may need to be examinedlanguage by language. More research isneeded to examine the role of these factorsat specific proficiency levels, e.g., the kindsof texts and tasks that allow students toacquire the relevant linguistic knowledgethat is needed to advance to the next level,the relative importance of these factors fordifferent languages, and their characteris-tics at particular proficiency levels. A relatedquestion is determining the contributionsthat direct lexical and grammatical studymay have on the acquisition process.

Two final questions raised by this studyinclude the role of listening proficiency inthe development of speaking proficiencyand the way that reading and listeningtasks may propel proficiency developmentacross modalities. It is interesting to con-sider if listening levels need to be higherthan speaking levels in order for speakingproficiency to progress into the Advancedrange.

While the data presented in this articleare robust and substantive, especially forFrench and Spanish, it should be notedthat around 85% of the data stem fromthree large state universities and thereforemay be more representative of large stateuniversities than of private universitiesor colleges and smaller institutions. More-over, the absence of biographical datadoes not allow any assumptions to bemade about the relationship between profi-ciency levels, length and type of instruction,

and student background. Still, the data pre-sented offer a first comprehensive picture ofthe reading and listening proficiency levelsof U.S. college students at major milestonesand raise a series of tantalizing questions,answers to which may reshape the wayforeign languages—in particular, readingand listening—are taught and learned.

ConclusionThe data presented in this article suggestthat it may be time to rethink the role offoreign language education for academicpurposes in the United States and the roleof foreign language proficiency within aliberal arts curriculum. In particular, thereseems to be increasing recognition of theneed to develop principled approachestoward improving listening proficiency,and to a lesser extent reading proficiency,throughout the undergraduate foreign lan-guage experience. A focus on listening pro-ficiency may not only help the professionsucceed in providing students with useful,professional academic foreign languagelistening skills, but may even be key todeveloping professional speaking skills aswell. While reading proficiency levels, espe-cially for cognate languages, appear to bemuch higher than speaking levels and closeto what one might expect at various pointsin a postsecondary program, more princi-pled approaches to reading proficiency mayallow learners to reach what Carroll (1967)thought he discovered 50 years ago, i.e.,Advanced High and Superior levels.

Because the ACTFL proficiency guide-lines afford a developmental perspectiveand describe what a learner can do at vari-ous proficiency levels and what he or shewill be able to do at the next higher level,they provide a framework for secondary andpostsecondary foreign language depart-ments with respect to aligning goals andcurricula across the learning experienceand setting proficiency goals for major mile-stones in a student’s career. The ACTFLframeworks and assessments for speakingandwriting have already had amajor impact

220 SUMMER 2016

on curriculum and instruction. It is time todo the same for listening and reading.

Notes1. The Standards-based Measure of Profi-

ciency (STAMP) is a four-skills onlineproficiency test using adapted authenticand authentic-like materials. Its bench-mark-level descriptions are claimed to becomparable to the ACTFL proficiencyguidelines (Avant Assessment, 2012).

2. Watson andWolfel (2015) provided rawdata only (pp. 71–72). To calculatemean listening and reading proficiency,their raw data were coded as follows:ILR 0¼ 1, ILR 0þ¼ 2, ILR 1¼ 3, ILR1þ¼ 4, etc. The ranges of these scoreswere as follows: 1.69 (range: 1, 7); 1.79(range: 1, 7); 4.04 (range: 1, 7); 3.78(range (2, 7).

3. Instructors were identified by not beingassociated with a particular class level.Incomplete tests were tests for which noACTFL rating could be assigned becausestudents stopped after completing only afew items.

4. It is unclear what scale the ACTFL scaleis. It is often considered ordinal, notinterval, usually on the basis that it takeslonger to move from one sublevel to thenext at the higher than at the lower endof the scale, and because the presumedadditional knowledge required to moveto the next sublevel at the higher end ofthe scale is larger. However, this is alsotrue of norm-referenced scales such asthe one the Test of English as a ForeignLanguage is based on, where the amountof knowledge required moving, e.g.,from a score of 110 to 120 must certainlybe larger than moving from a score of 20to 30. Furthermore, means and standarddeviations have commonly been pre-sented in studies dealing with theACTFL scale (see G. L. Thompson,Cox, & Knapp, 2016, for a recent discus-sion), mirroring the practice in the socialsciences in general, where means areregularly calculated for ordinal data

that are based on an underlying scale(see, e.g., Larson-Hall, 2010, pp. 34–35).

AcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments are gratefully made tothe ACTFL, especially Elvira Swender, forinitiating and supporting the study; LTI,especially Mohamed Diop, for generouslysupporting the research financially and ad-ministratively; the Language Flagship andthe Language Proficiency Initiative univer-sities—Michigan State University, the Uni-versity of Minnesota, and the University ofUtah—for sharing their data; and the in-structors and students at all participatinguniversities who generously gave theirtime. Acknowledgments are also gratefullymade to the Foreign Language Annals editor,three anonymous reviewers, and the Insti-tute for Test Research and Test Develop-ment, Leipzig, Germany, especially FannyBies and Olaf B€arenf€anger, for helping withthe data coding and data analysis.

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Submitted January 26, 2016

Accepted March 1, 2016

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