The modified American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Educational Testing Service (ACTFL/ETS) oral proficiency scale was developed in response to a request from the New Brunswick (Canada) Department of Education for assistance in comparing the results of its French immersion and core programs. Because the existing ACTFL/ETS academic language scale provided inadequate discrimination for the skills of immersion students, two researchers interviewed students from both the core and the immersion programs in grades 7 through 9 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and developed a provisional rating scale, a set of sample or practice tapes with descriptions of the speech samples, and a set of test tapes for interview raters. Some of the findings were the following: there was no overlap of oral proficiencies between the core and immersion students; with the exception of pronunciation, the unmodified novice level descriptions applied to the core students; the modified ratings, labeled "junior," include some content areas typically rated "novice"; the differences within the relatively fluent immersion group were primarily in their abilities to discuss familiar or unfamiliar, complex situations, and concrete or abstract ideas. The major limiting factor was their speech accuracy. The junior rating scale descriptions are included. (MSE)