Proficiency-based assessment & credit
Recognize what learners can do.
Learners deserve clear expectations, meaningful opportunities to demonstrate their learning, and pathways to have that learning recognized—including opportunities to earn credit through demonstrated proficiency.
A shared direction
Can-Do goals guide the learning.
In FILL, learner goals are structured around the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements. Alongside the FILL Guiding Principles, they connect learner agency with transparent expectations and achievable next steps.
They provide the organizing framework in place of a traditional prescribed curriculum. The learner’s pathway, resources, and pace can vary while goals remain visible and understood.
Three connected purposes
Goals, evidence, recognition.
Can-Do Statements: setting goals and reflecting.
Learners and facilitators use the statements to identify learning targets and reflect on progress. They describe abilities that should be demonstrated consistently across situations and over time, rather than tasks checked off after one successful attempt.
Assessment: understanding and demonstrating learning.
Asset-based assessment begins with what learners know, understand, and can demonstrate. Feedback helps identify strengths, needed support, and the next achievable goal. Opportunities to demonstrate learning should reflect appropriate preparation and clear expectations.
Proficiency: using language beyond rehearsal.
Evidence of proficiency concerns what a learner can do with language in spontaneous situations, beyond a single practiced task. Where formal recognition requires an official proficiency result, the relevant recognized assessment is used.
Can-Do self-assessment helps guide learning. It does not, by itself, establish an official proficiency rating or confer academic credit.
Reference: NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, developed by NCSSFL and ACTFL.
Challenge with a pathway to success
Healthy struggle. Appropriate support.
FILL’s commitment is to avoid placing learners in situations where they are not yet equipped with the learning needed to succeed. Goals should be achievable with sufficient, targeted, appropriate effort.
This includes productive challenge, feedback, and revision. Facilitators respond to emerging needs, help learners prepare, and make both expectations and available support transparent.
Opportunities to earn credit
Let demonstrated learning count.
FILL supports opportunities for learners to earn credit on the basis of demonstrated language proficiency, rather than only through completing a particular course sequence or spending a prescribed amount of time in class.
Credit is awarded by the relevant school or institution under its applicable policies. FILL does not itself award credit. Available languages, accepted assessments, required proficiency levels, and the amount of credit must be confirmed with that institution.
Make the route to credit clear from the beginning.
- Confirm the opportunity. Identify the school or institution that would award credit and verify its current policy.
- Make expectations public. Clarify the required proficiency levels, language skills assessed, accepted evidence, and any costs or other requirements.
- Support preparation. Use Can-Do goals, feedback, and targeted learning to help learners progress toward those expectations.
- Demonstrate and recognize learning. Complete the required assessment or evidence review and follow the institution’s process for awarding and recording credit.
Individual pathways. Rigorous expectations.
Respect the learner.
Make achievement visible.
The pathway can be personal. Expectations should be transparent. Recognition should rest on credible evidence of what a learner can do.
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