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.
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