World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages

A set of US national standards for language education published by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The standards are organised around five goal areas — Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities (the "5 Cs") — and apply to all languages including sign languages. ASL programmes increasingly align curricula and assessment to the World-Readiness Standards, and AI-based ASL learning tools are expected to support rather than undermine these standards. Curricular alignment is a major theme in educator-facing AI research because tools that ignore the Standards risk producing learners who pass tool-based assessments but fail to meet national proficiency expectations.