Listening
Format: Timed - 50 minutes. Delivered on computer. Audio clips with pictures. Multiple choice questions.
Student usually controls survival needs; limited social conventions; some topics beyond basic survival needs, such as personal history, leisure activities, familiar topics relating to home, school, daily activities, simple purchases, directions.
Student is usually able to understand short conversations, get the gist of longer conversations.
Reading
Format: Timed - 50 minutes. Delivered on computer. Diverse reading material. Multiple choice questions.
Student is usually able to understand simple paragraphs for personal communication, information, or recreation; read invitations, social notes, personal letters, and very simple business letters; understand the main idea in simple articles in popular magazines and other non-technical information sources; read authentic prose or edited prose and simple poetry.
Student is consistently able to follow connected discourse with simple cohesive elements; interpret most expressions of quantity, most adjectives and adverbs, and common reflective verbs and idioms.
Writing
Format: Timed - 50 minutes. Typed responses on computer.
Student usually controls very simple social demands; familiar topics grounded in personal experience (e.g., likes and dislikes, daily routines, dates and times, everyday events, immediate surroundings at home and in the classroom).
Student is usually able to write short paragraphs and simple letters.
Accuracy: Is usually able to use future, past, and present tense of common regular and irregular verbs, including reflexive verbs; produce writing which is comprehensible to native speakers accustomed to reading Italian written by non-native speakers.
Speaking
Format: 10 to 15 minute Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) with role-play. In-person interview.
Student usually controls routine travel and survival needs; basic personal information (e.g., simple autobiographical details, leisure-time activities, daily schedule).
Student is usually able to ask and answer questions, initiate and respond to simple statements; maintain simple face-to-face conversation; and handle some detailed transactions in situations such as restaurants, banks, post offices, hotels, drugstores.
Accuracy: Is usually able to be understood by persons used to dealing with non-native speakers; demonstrate grammatical accuracy in basic structures, e.g., subject-verb agreement, present tense of regular verbs and some irregular verbs (essere, avere, andare, fare).