Implementing Proficiency Testing with the OPI

In 2026, students completing the first-year Spanish sequence at the University of Denver (DU) were given the opportunity to take the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) to earn credit for their summative speaking assessment. Results demonstrated that our program is not only meeting but exceeding our proficiency targets. While financial barriers will likely require a cheaper test for expanded integration at DU, we hope our experience motivates you to consider trying out external proficiency testing in your own program!

Why incorporate proficiency testing?

Most students completing our first-year Spanish sequence major in other disciplines and do not receive official certification of the strong language skills they develop in our courses. In a 2025 poll of 229 students enrolled in Span 1003, 59% expressed interest in such a certification for their resumé.

As instructors, external, third-party proficiency testing provides evidence that our students are reaching our program’s proficiency goals. Moreover, accurately assessing oral proficiency in an objective manner with high inter-rater reliability is a challenging, time-consuming process which proficiency testing can replace.

With spontaneous interactive speech being the primary outcome targeted by our program, the OPI was the obvious choice for a pilot.

Motivating students to take the OPI

The OPI involves a substantial out-of-pocket expense ($73-$165 depending on a variety of factors), and therefore was not justifiable as a course requirement. We instead incentivized volunteers through several means:

• A partial rebate funded by $1,500 in grant money raised by our program

• Full credit on students’ summative speaking assessment if they scored at or above our targeted program outcome (Novice High)

• Emphasizing the career benefits of certifying their language level on their resumé
  

To distribute the grant money, we circulated an application offering $25 towards the OPI. Initial interest was disappointingly low, so the offer was increased to $50. Ultimately, 32 students applied, 28 took the test, and 21 followed the steps necessary for reimbursement.

Logistics

Students could either have their instructor proctor during office hours or take the OPI at home via a remote proctoring service. Because the latter involved an additional cost, most chose the former. DU unfortunately does not have a campus proctoring facility, which meant extra time for the instructors, but it was easy to proctor multiple students simultaneously in an empty classroom.

Students also chose between the OPI (a live telephone call) and the OPIc, a conversation with a virtual avatar designed to mimic the OPI. 100% of students chose the latter.

The OPIc asks students prior to testing to select between 5 test forms of increasing difficulty. Two students received no rating due to not meeting the minimum proficiency threshold for their chosen test form. The administering agency had not informed us of this risk, but they did offer the retakes for free as a courtesy. Another student did not receive a rating due to background noise and did not retake the test.

Results: Students are meeting our outcomes!

The ratings of the 27 students who received scores were as follows:

Our program target is Novice High, and while these 27 students represent a small sample size (11% of the 250 finishing our sequence this spring) with obvious selection bias (weaker students were less likely to volunteer), it demonstrates that students are not only meeting but exceeding our target.

This also helps validate our primary data source for program assessment. Each spring, students completing our sequence self-evaluate according to ACTFL standards. This year, 90% of students self-evaluated as reaching Novice High or above, and the OPI results suggest this is at minimum directionally accurate.

Student motivations

As part of the rebate process, 21 students completed a questionnaire on their experience:

• The primary motivators for taking the OPI were certification for students’ resumés (10 students) and sense of achievement (10 students). That is, most students took the OPI for a benefit external to the course itself.

• 13 reported scoring higher than they expected, 7 about the same as expected, and just 1 worse than expected. This further indicates that our self-evaluation data if anything underestimates student capabilities.

• The free-response section indicated a general frustration with the OPIc’s virtual avatar format. Students had the choice between this and a more expensive human-interactive version, but unilaterally chose the former due to the cost involved.

• Multiple students commented on the confidence-boosting impact of third-party validation of their skills:
  

“I think my greatest accomplishment in the course was taking the OPI this quarter. Although it was difficult, it gave me a perspective of how much I have truly learned throughout this school year, and I was able to perform better on the OPI than expected. Just generally, both the OPI and the Spanish sequence have played a huge role in getting me outside of my shell and comfort zone.”

“Earning the ACTFL certification gave me a real sense of accomplishment, and more importantly, it gave me confidence in my own Spanish abilities that I simply didn't have when the quarter started. I came in unsure I would ever feel comfortable speaking out loud, and I'm leaving knowing I can hold my own in a conversation. That confidence is the single most valuable thing I'm taking from the program, because it changes how I'll approach speaking Spanish in every situation going forward.”

Increasing integration of proficiency testing into our program

Ideally, we can eventually have all our students take a proficiency test upon completing our program, but it is unlikely this will happen with the OPI. The cost is unrealistic for a required course element, and less importantly, we were frankly not impressed with their customer service: perhaps we were unlucky with the representative we were assigned, but we found ours generally unsupportive during the planning stage. Moreover, while we are grateful for the retake provided to two of the three students whose tests could not be scored, we would have appreciated advance warning to avoid those situations in the first place.

We could certify our own instructors to administer the OPI, thereby reducing the price to $40/student. But the costly and time-consuming training process would be unfeasible for our large and frequently rotating teaching team.

A cheaper testing alternative is the Avant Stamp 4S, which not only evaluates speaking proficiency, but also reading, writing, and listening at roughly $25/student. It was not originally selected because the speaking portion does not involve authentic interaction with a human, but students did not ultimately choose that option for the OPI, nor were they satisfied with the AI-prompted OPIc. At one third the cost for four times the skills evaluated, the Avant Stamp 4S may be a more realistic way forward.

Whatever we decide, I am excited to integrate proficiency testing at a wider scale in our program, and I hope to be back with another blog post in the future comparing our experience to this one!

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Stefan DuBois currently coordinates the first-year Spanish program at the University of Denver. He enjoys keeping class fresh for both himself and his students by drawing inspiration from videogames, board games, and podcasts to create fun, communicative activities, many of which are available online at TPT.