The Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) and You

What does it mean to be fluent in Arabic? How can one determine ‘how well’ they know the language? There are many informal ways to measure this. How far you are in Al-Kitaab? What year of college Arabic are you in? How many swear words you know?

Currently there are two formal bodies that have attempted to quantify the answer. First is the ACTFL (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages), which has established a scale for Arabic that ranges from novice to native. Frankly, I have never seen anybody use it.

The only thing close to a standard is the 0-5 scale by the  Interagency Language Roundtable for rating language proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. According to the ILR, here’s what the scale means:

0 No Proficiency: No practical ability in the language.
1 Elementary Proficiency: Able to communicate with descriptive ideas, and possibly garner the main idea from spoken or written material.
2 Limited Working Proficiency: Able to comprehend factual source material. Capable of handling limited or repeated social demands and subjects of comprehension.
3 General Professional Proficiency: Able to participate ‘effectively’ in most social and professional topics and papers.
4 Advanced Professional Proficiency: Able to use the language fluently and accurately for all professional needs.
5 Functionally Native Proficiency: Functionally equivalent to that of a highly articulate well-educated native speaker and reflects the cultural standards of the country where the language is natively used.

And to show it in practice, here’s the brakedown of FBI agents at different levels of proficiency:

I consider the above graph comic relief for an otherwise dull post. 

Problems:
The ILR scale is not without its detractors. John Eisele, of the College of William and Mary, gives the following critique:

The first thing that strikes me as odd about these guidelines as developed for Arabic is the disconnect between them and Arabic language pedagogy. This is evident in the way descriptions tend to denigrate or devalue learned or ‘rehearsed’ language at the earlier levels. This is especially so in the ILR descriptions of the first three levels in which the term learned phrases is used in a pejorative fashion as if what is ‘learned’ is being demeaned in some way, as if the truly successful examinee would acquire these phrases not by learning them by the intervention of the holy spirit.-Eisele Pg. 202 Handbook for Arabic Language Professionals in the 21st Century

Worse, the scale does nothing to address the omnipresent issue of diglossa in the Arabic language. Is it really possible to attain anything higher than a 2+ without knowing elements of both فصحى (MSA) and عامية colloquial? The scale does not address this. Instead, agencies like the State department will offer tests and give ratings in either in selected عامية (Iraqi and Egyptian, currently) or فصحى, treating them as entirely separate languages.

Use:
The main advantage of the ILR scale is to define when Arabic is considered ‘useful’ at the professional level, that is, a 3. Once an objective scale is created, it is easy to recognize the multi-level disaster that is American Arabic. More locally, I will also be using this scale to rate the difficulty and aprropriate level for Arabic learning material rather than using subjective terms like ‘for intermidiate students’. 

To the Brits, Aussies, or others learning Arabic, what scale do your governments/teaching organizations use?