The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) assessment serves as a widely acknowledged and reliable measure of an individual's linguistic speaking aptitude. Prioritizing Higher Order Thinking (HOT) skills in the creation and execution of ACTFL OPI-aligned speaking activities offers a profoundly effective strategy for cultivating students' oral proficiency at a higher level in the target language, both within and beyond the classroom confines. Speaking activities that are ACTFL OPI-focused enhance students’ exposure to a wide array of subjects, fostering their communicative competence to encompass practical daily conversations as well as articulate argumentative discourse across familiar and unfamiliar topics.

In our presentation, we delve into the strategic integration of HOT skills: analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For instance, within our weekly speaking club, students actively engage in discussions on contemporary hot topics. Each session, students assume different roles, such as the impromptu topic host (creating), evaluators (evaluating), master of ceremonies (creating), and speakers (analyzing). This multifaceted approach allows students to exercise their HOT skills and fosters a well-rounded language proficiency. This endeavor not only aims to enhance students' interpersonal and presentational communication competencies but also to cultivate their critical thinking abilities. Through drawing upon the experiences of a prominent California-based language institution, the discussion will shed light on how these integration of HOT skills into OPI-aligned speaking activities. Moreover, the presentation will pinpoint on fostering peer learning and autonomous learning paradigms through these discussions. The presenters will showcase these activities, presented through multimedia mediums.

Authors:
Hui-Ju Chuang, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, United States
Lin Tsai, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Hui-Ju Chuang is a School Teacher/Instructor at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in United States

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