Why French?
French continues to be an influential language throughout the world. It is spoken on five continents, and is spoken as an official language in 33 countries.
FORBES Business 03/21/2014
"French isn’t mostly spoken by French people, and hasn’t been for a long time now. The language is growing fast, and growing in the fastest-growing areas of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. The latest projection is that French will be spoken by 750 million people by 2050.”
For your reference, University of TEXAS Artlington, "Why Study French?": http://www.uta.edu/modl/french/why.html
Language Proficiency
Developed from the Federal Government’s ILR scale by the American Council of Foreign Languages, the ACTFL proficiency scale has 4 main levels (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and Superior. The first three levels are each subdivided into 3 sub-levels (Low, Mid and High). The ACTFL scale provides a great deal of definition, especially at the lower levels of proficiency usually achieved in foreign language learning. It is widely used in many arenas, but particularly in academia. Find more information about the ACTFL scale here: www.actfl.org.