Paul Beaufait's List: Language Assessment

• Recruitment experts said that companies are filtering out applicants with below-average English skills. This is especially true in the UAE, which is increasingly becoming one of the most popular destinations for multinational firms and business startups.

     

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• Colin Burcher, head of programmatic marketing, EMEA, at Google, said that one of the preferred requirements they look for when hiring employees is the ability to speak and write in English.

       

   

    “Being part of a global team, it is crucial that we share knowledge and collaborate across regions. It is therefore important that all team members are able to communicate in a single language,” Burcher said in an emailed statement to Gulf News.

• Test performance data in this study suggest that nonnative varieties of English can be used as listening test input while attitude questionnaire results go counter.
• These findings support most of the previous research in  this area.
• Until research shows that the use of nonnative English as input  is irrelevant to the construct of listening, we may be unable to use such input in testing, especially in high-stakes tests such as TOEFL and  IELTS.
• As nonnative speech gains recognition among language users and test takers, we hope the attitudes and perceptions toward the use of  these varieties of English will change.

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• This was not a statistically controlled study: the subjects took a free test online and of their own accord. 
• But Philip Hult, the boss of EF, says that his sample shows results similar to a more scientifically controlled but smaller study by the British Council.
• Several factors correlate with English ability.  Wealthy countries do better overall. But smaller wealthy countries do better still: the larger the number of speakers of a country’s main language, the worse that country tends to be at English.
• Export dependency is another correlate with English. Countries that export more are better at English (though it’s not clear which factor causes which).
• Teaching plays a role, too. Starting young, while it seems a good idea, may not pay off: children between eight and 12 learn foreign languages faster than younger ones, so each class hour on English is better spent on a 10-year-old than on a six-year-old.
• Teaching plays a role, too. Starting young, while it seems a good idea, may not pay off: children between eight and 12 learn foreign languages faster than younger ones, so each class hour on English is better spent on a 10-year-old than on a six-year-old.

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