How Languagenut aligns to ACTFL’s World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages
The five “C” goal areas (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) stress the application of learning a language beyond the instructional setting. The goal is to prepare learners to apply the skills and understandings measured by the Standards to bring a global competence to their future careers and experiences.
These standards include language to reflect the current educational landscape, including Common Core State Standards, College and Career Readiness, and 21st century skills. The standards are applicable to learners at all levels, as well as native speakers and heritage speakers, including ESL students.
Languagenut’s extensive digital resources are available for elementary, middle, and high schools, with extensive vocabulary, grammar, phonics, sentence building, and comprehension exercises across the four key skills.
Here’s an overview of how we align with the American Council of Teaching Foreign Language’s World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages.
ACTFL Goal Areas
ACTFL Standards
Languagenut
Communication: Communicate effectively in more than one language in order to function in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes.
1. Interpersonal Communication:
Learners interact and negotiate meaning in spoken, signed, or written conversations to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions.
2. Interpretive Communication:
Learners understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.
3. Presentational Communication:
Learners present information, concepts, and ideas to inform, explain, persuade, and narrate on a variety of topics using appropriate media and adapting to various audiences of listeners, readers, or viewers.
Over 20 topics support learners with communicating across a variety of situations in listening, reading, writing and speaking activities.
Languagenut provides a range of text types including conversations, interviews, articles, recipes, and reviews.
All our themes and vocabulary are based on the four skills and include facts, feelings and opinions.
Learners can acquire useful key vocabulary and structures related to arrangements and transactions through the dialogues in our listening and reading activities.
Our audios include monologues and conversations and are all supported with a transcript which can be used alongside the audio if required.
Open writing and speaking questions, across 3 different challenge levels, allow learners to practice responses to questions that would typically be asked and to produce extended responses.
Teachers can personalize questions to adapt to the needs of their learners.
Cultures: Interact with cultural competence and understanding.
1. Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives:
Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied.
2. Relating Cultural Products to Perspectives:
Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the products and perspectives of the cultures studied.
Our content covers a wide range of issues and aspects of culture.
Modern issues and themes, as well as historical world events feature in our texts and audios.
Open speaking and writing questions allow learners to practice spontaneous speech and give their views on a range of topics and cultural issues.
Our speaking photo descriptions provide learners with the opportunity to describe and explain cultural aspects of the language they are studying.
Connections: Connect with other disciplines and acquire information and diverse perspectives in order to use the language to function in academic and career-related situations.
1. Making Connections:
Learners build, reinforce, and expand their knowledge of other disciplines while using the language to develop critical thinking and to solve problems creatively.
2. Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives:
Learners access and evaluate information and diverse perspectives that are available through the language and its cultures.
Language content supports practical communication across many themes and topics including academic and career-related situations.
Our teaching with Languagenut document, as well as our lesson plans for elementary level, provide teachers with practical ideas about how to connect with other disciplines to enhance the learning experience for their students.
Language is built up gradually from single word to short phrases to longer sentences to support learners to build, reinforce and expand their knowledge.
Our Grammar and Verbs section supports leaners to solve problems in their language learning journey.
Comparisons: Develop insight into the nature of language and culture in order to interact with cultural competence.
1. Language Comparisons:
Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied on their own.
2. Cultural Comparisons:
Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied on their own.
Students can practice independently at their own pace on any device both in the classroom and at home and teachers can create a personal learning plan for individual learners.
Supporting learners to investigate and explain the nature of language is made easy as learners can practice any content as many times as they need to ensure they learn and develop their independence.
English translations support independent study
The platform provides a variety of culturally rich and non-bias activities at all challenge levels.
Racial and cultural diversity are reflected in our resources and scenario-based activities.
Communities: Communicate and interact with cultural competence in order to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world.
1. School and Global Communities:
Learners use the language both within and beyond the classroom to interact and collaborate in their community and the globalized world.
2. Lifelong Learning:
Learners set goals and reflect on their progress in using languages for enjoyment, enrichment, and advancement.
Our Phonics games allow learners to improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
Learners can listen to any of the spoken language in any of our games as and when they need to improve their ability to collaborate in their chosen language community.
A variety of high frequency and common grammatical structures both at beginner and advanced level support learners to develop their automaticity.
Teachers can set an assignment test for learners to do at the beginning and end of a set time frame to compare results and progress.
Learners can record themselves and have their pronunciation automatically marked by voice recognition software.
Content that is unique to the individual’s learning journey.
All learner activities are automatically marked.
Learners are awarded points to encourage and motivate, along with ‘badges’ awarded for specific achievements.
Want to find out more about how we can support your school?
See what other teachers think of Languagenut:
“Languagenut has been an invaluable resource for us, which both the staff and students love. We use it primarily for homework and find it so easy to set assignments and track progress.
The self marking tasks are a huge time saving advantage and students enjoy the instant feedback and opportunity to improve their scores.
The online tasks are high quality and well matched to what our students need to know and are a great way at not only reinforcing vocabulary but also giving students that all important exam practice!
The team at Languagenut are always amazing, nothing is too much trouble and I have always had a quick, friendly response to any queries or requests.
Recently the team uploaded a lot of custom content for us, which would have taken me so long to do myself, so I’m really grateful for their support.
I would not hesitate to recommend Languagenut to others, and in fact all academies in our Trust have now taken out subscriptions and are also discovering the benefits of this fantastic resource.”
Q: Why did you choose Languagenut?
A: “Because it had enormous success with the students, caters for all KSs and motivation has increased so much! Furthermore, it has phonics, it is brilliant and KS4 will be provided with all exam boards exercises. It has NCELP vocabulary, it’s fun, it’s engaging!”
I had half-forgotten that we were still in a trial period, such has been the success of Languagenut to date. It’s a real hit with both students and staff -everyone’s really bought into it, and it has a high profile in the school with weekly prize competitions and league tables in operation for highest performing student in each year group, plus end of half-term prizes for best student and class overall. The support offered by Dan has also been excellent, and is appreciated. It would be difficult to imagine the department without Languagenut now!
Q. What was the primary reason for renewing your subscription?
A. It has been hugely beneficial in increasing teacher subject knowledge and confidence. All staff have log ins and use it to help them improve (non-specialists). The children have really enjoyed it. I have just completed my Middle leadership project which explored strategies for increasing teacher confidence in Languages and impacting on outcomes for children and have found the introduction of Languagenut to have been pivotal in the success of this as attainment has increased significantly across the school so thank you.
Q. How has Languagenut added value to your school, classroom, or teaching?
A. It has added interactivity and higher levels of interest and engagement in lessons. We have a whole school weekly competition which I am able to track children on ranking list. Languagenut has been great in lockdowns allowing us to continue providing our curriculum coverage.
I am just SO IMPRESSED with Languagenut. It is IN-CRED-I-BLE. I just simply love it. You have great ideas, whether for reading, speaking, listening or writing. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this program. And, more importantly, so do my students. It is simply — Brillant. Wonderful. Amazing. Incredible. I have been teaching for 42 years, and Languagenut is simply the best resource I have found. I regularly use about 15 different programs to work on skill development, but if I had to keep just one, it would be Languagenut.
Languagenut fills a huge void in addressing the need for students to practice each of the four skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking – and at more than one challenge level. The games are fun – I got caught up testing them and played for four hours. It allows for students to practice speaking while having fun thanks to games such as Skyrise and Speech Practice. The listening exercises feature a variety of voices, of different sexes, and the little snail button that allows students to slow the recording down makes them VERY happy. Word Pop and Tic-Tac-Toe are their current favorites.
My students are still “catching up” from having been online during part of the covid confinement. Languagenut allows me to assign certain exercises or resources to part of the class who need to catch up while at the same time assigning more challenging work to students who excel. For example, yesterday, I assigned Jigsaw and Verb Matcher to student trying to remember what to do with an “er” verb like “jouer” while others went on to practice speaking, writing and reading.
The site is organized logically and intuitively, with a top tool bar and the buttons Exam Skills, Vocab Trainer, Grammar & Verbs and Sentence Building on the left side of the page. Not only is there a huge amount of readily available content on a wide variety of topics, but teachers can add their own customized content quite easily. I am still exploring, but to-date have found excellent lesson plans (!), story books and songs. The songs are especially cool because you can use them Karaoke-style!
I am looking forward to seeing how Languagenut continues to evolve. Thank you so much, Languagenut. You make every teacher’s life better
Just to say that I am in one of our schools where Arabic is taught by a non specialist and there is nothing but praise about how helpful it is for them to have Arabic content in Languagenut. It is fantastic for the department to be able to set similar tasks for French, Spanish AND Arabic and the support your platform provides for this teacher (and her pupils) is invaluable.
I should give you some of the credit for the good results we got this year.
I love being able to see their progress when I go into the Admin/Class management section and this allows me to give individual feedback and direction. I am delighted in how positively engaged the students are in Languagenut and will continue using it for other topics.
• Internet based so can be used anywhere, anytime.
• A range of languages available, we use Maori for our whole school and English for our ESOL students.
• Gives confidence to our English speaking staff who are teaching Te Reo Maori this year.
• A huge range of relevant and engaging contexts
• Plenty of activities for teachers and students
• Able to check whether teachers are using the programme
• Assessments for students to use when they use their own login
• Very low cost
There are a variety of languages available on Languagenut and I believe it would suit the uptake of any and all languages – and could be an excellent support for Te Reo.
Te Reo is used frequently, as is French and Spanish, which we teach in the senior school. Students have enjoyed learning phrases and using a particular language to support their inquiries if researching countries/communities. We have been very happy with all that it offers. The support team are great, responding quickly to any issues and prompting our use if we are not making the most of the programme! Our students enjoy it. So do our Teachers! We have considered it a good investment.
Languagenut has been a invaluable resource, particularly for students who require general language acquisition. This is because it: utilises the student’s first language for instruction, supports further learning in the student’s first language (proven by research to benefit second language learning), promotes learning in each mode (listening, speaking, reading and writing), guides students with vocabulary and sentence structure, consolidates previous English learning, is accessible in a variety of settings with different teachers/parents, progress can be formatively assessed and further goals set, is suitable for students at any level of English language learning, allows the coordinator to manipulate the learner’s starting point and its rewards are motivating for students.
Our students look forward to their Languagenut learning (either with support or independently) and celebrate their successes with us. The staff at Languagenut have also been incredibly helpful and quick to answer any of my questions. It didn’t take long for me to learn how to use this resource and teach other teachers/parents. I will soon be talking with teachers at our Mid Canterbury ESOL Cluster meeting about the benefits of Languagenut.
I have been using this program for at least 8 years and enjoy the updates. It really forms a solid base for basic and then more complicated vocabulary, allowing the students to progress at their own rate.
We have a few pupils who are obviously incredibly keen on computer games and the thought of being on the front page of the website has really motivated them to practice. The school improved its world raking quickly and they went crazy when we got in the top 20. There is a real buzz amongst the pupils as they are really keen to stay in the top 20, are currently 13.
I have also created a lunch time club where pupils can come and learn another language. I have three doing Japanese, two doing Italian and a few others doing Spanish.
Languagenut is a great website which reinforces my teaching and the pupils’ learning, allowing them to practise their French independently. It also allows me the time within the ict lesson to go around the class and spend time with each of my pupils.
A great site and I would recommend to any primary Mfl teacher.
I have also noted an improvement in the acquisition of new words amongst the tamariki who already speak Māori.
Languagenut provides a fun and engaging way of learning language and is very popular with the tamariki. It also provides teachers with the ability to monitor their students progress, assign specific activities and celebrate their childrens learning with certificates.
I would highly recommend it as a means to learn te reo Māori.
As a language teacher for the whole school with over 500 students, I find Languagenut is easy to use for managing all classes, all students’ progress and generating the students’ reports.
Students are motivated by the points they get on Languagenut while practising what they have learned in class. Some of the children in our school can only have Chinese for one term a year. I assign homework regularly for these group of children through Languagenut so they can carry on practising what they have learnt. I think this is a great way to maintain what the students have learnt since language is very easy to lose if you don’t keep practising.