The Southeast Asian Language Council

Filipino

Find the Filipino Oral Proficiency Guidelines here.

Please note that the Oral Proficiency content and opinions on this website are solely those of the Southeast Asian Language Council’s (SEALC) and not those of ACTFL. ACTFL does not guarantee the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the information provided.

Novice Mid

When describing their apartment or hobbies, the interviewee struggles to answer but provides some basic description with reliance on their primary language. The interviewee is able to answer a simple question about days of the week in a full sentence. The interviewee often pauses for long periods of time. Overall, this interviewee was able to respond to simple questions by providing (mostly memorized) phrases, words, and short sentences. For the above reasons, this interviewee is at a Novice Mid level of Filipino.

Intermediate Mid

The interviewee is generally able to communicate his ideas in strings of sentences, although he tends to rely on his primary language when asked Advanced level questions. He also has troubles conjugating verb aspects, especially the contemplated aspect in a complex structure. He is able to elicit information by asking appropriate questions. The interviewee was able to give a specific description of both his current house and desired apartment (during role-play). In spite of his limitations, he can be generally understood by a sympathetic listener, making this interviewee an Intermediate Mid-level speaker of Filipino.

Advanced Mid

The interviewee is able to cover a broad range of topics, though mostly concrete and factual ones such as current events, travel, issues, and work place. There is an emerging ability to hypothesize and support an opinion with detailed explanation; the interviewee also uses transitional phrases well and grammar mistakes are overall minor. However, he was not able to sustain the high accuracy and fluency in the Superior level. He is comfortable performing communicative tasks at the advanced level and was able resolve an unexpected complication – a call to the police regarding a minor car accident – during the role-play. He is quite proficient in all time frames (e.g., past, present, and future) and narrates in detail with ease and confidence; for instance, when describing his travels to the Philippines. The above examples demonstrate that this speaker is at an Advanced-Mid level of Filipino.

Superior

The interviewee is able to communicate with accuracy and fluency. She can fully participate in conversations with different topics ranging from concrete to abstract (i.e. discussions on current news such as the Covid-19 pandemic and hypothetical scenarios regarding mandatory student housing at universities). She presents her opinions by giving structured arguments to support her ideas and uses complex and less frequently used vocabulary, such as “alituntunin.” She is able to fully express her ideas in the language and her ability to engage in extended discourse is often marked with ease, clarity, accuracy, and fluency. For these reasons this speaker is at a Superior level of Filipino.

Find the Filipino Heritage & Project-based Language Learning lesson here. This lesson is also available on the UCLA National Heritage Language Resource Center website. For more information on this initiative, click here.

The following reading lesson designs, based on published authentic source texts, were developed, revised, and submitted by the listed authors. You are welcome to use the lesson designs under the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (BY-NC-SA).

Please note that the files may contain specific portions designed for students and other portions directed at teachers. Levels of lessons correspond to the ACTFL Proficiency Descriptors for Interpretive Mode.

 

Authors: Jayson Parba, Lady Aileen Orsal, and Irene Gonzaga

 

Authors: Ken Calang and Karryl Angelie Abon-Amis

 

Authors: Amy Peria, Precious Arao, and Richard Nicolas