|
|
| Subject: Language |
|
|
|
Language test spells trouble for newcomers
JIM ROSS FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Ziyad, left, of Saudi Arabia and Abdulaziz of Kuwait took the IELTS English proficiency test at Conestoga College in Kitchener May 31, 2008.
June 02, 2008
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
IMMIGRATION REPORTER
Think you speak English? Try this test.
Find the grammatical (or syntactic) error in this sentence: The standard of living has increased.
Stumped? Soon, that will count against you if you´re hoping to immigrate to Canada. The rigorous language test that will be a requirement is vital to be fair to the influx of newcomers or vastly discriminatory and fatally flawed, depending on whom you talk to.
The correct answer is: The standard of living has risen.
The grammar questions are among the trickiest in the International English Language Testing System exam, broken into 30 minutes of listening, 15 of speaking and an hour each of reading and writing. Created at Cambridge University in England, IELTS scores from one ("essentially has no ability beyond a few isolated words") to nine ("appropriate, accurate and fluent") with a six ("generally effective despite some inaccuracies") the most common pass.
The reading part is the hardest, most students agreed Saturday at Conestoga College in Kitchener, where 16 classrooms were filled with hope, passports and two No. 2 pencils each.
"I think I did very well. Maybe not excellent, but very well," said Prince Okoli, originally from Onitsha, Nigeria, and now of Woodbridge, who needs to pass to study chemical engineering at the University of Alberta.
Nineteen-year-old Abdulaziz was taking the test for the sixth time, at $250 a shot, trying to break a string of 5.5 scores to study dentistry at the University of Western Ontario. He´s no fan. "This course doesn´t show that we do speak English and we do understand and still we can´t get the scores."
Ghazala Zaid, 32, a dentist in Karachi, Pakistan, and now a dental hygienist in Markham hoping to go back to her profession, felt rushed at the reading but declared most of it "quite easy."
IELTS is the standard for proving English proficiency in Britain and Australia and is already used in Canada for foreign students wanting to go to university. Canada plans, via amendments to its immigration rules, to make it the standard for everyone, no exemptions.
Immigrants can currently take the IELTS or they can claim some proficiency and submit documents to back it up, which may turn out later to be wishful thinking.
"Some people think it´s bureaucratic nonsense," Burke Thornton, immigration program officer at the visa office in Buffalo, said of the universal test at a conference last month of immigration lawyers. But "the back and forth now" of declaring English proficiency and then having it not stand up "takes months and is contributing to the backlog. This way, there´s one test, it´s efficient, we move you through the queue."
To the argument that an English don from Oxford would be insulted, he said, "Pay your $200 and you sail through. It´s your commitment to living in this country."
The cost and the "one size fits all" alarms immigration lawyers. In a letter to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Canadian Bar Association called the time, money and academic rigour of the test a turnoff for people who are fluent in English and French and too hard for bricklayers and plumbers.
"We are slamming the door on skilled tradespeople, exactly the people we´re trying to bring here," said Toronto lawyer Robin Seligman, who is working to organize business owners and unions to oppose the test.
Canada proposes to give nonstudents the general level, not the academic, in which the writing portion is simpler.
The bar association wants exemptions, as Britain and Australia do. Their exemptions: people who have finished high school, hold a passport or have lived for 10 years or more in an English-speaking country, and university graduates in an English-speaking country. Or, they say, keep the rules but drop the pass mark for a tradesperson to an overall 4.5 ("basic competence in familiar situations, has frequent problems in understanding").
"It seems to me to be ridiculous" to give immigrants to Canada a test created in Britain and Australia, said Janna Fox, professor in the School of Linguistics at Carleton University. Fox is also the lead developer of a made-in-Canada test used to for university entrance.
"We don´t give potential citizens an American or a German test," she said. "The government is arguing efficiency and convenience. This is a quick and dirty approach and what makes it dirty is that we are not reflecting Canada."
Administered by the British Council and IELTS Australia, there are test centres in most countries, with 63 in India and 31 in China. Canada could quickly join forces, rather than set up a parallel system.
The test uses British English words and spelling as well as British and Australian references. An examiner at Conestoga said Canadian examiners tend to score Portuguese speakers higher in spoken English compared with British examiners, who score Indian speakers higher. "It´s all in the accent you´re used to hearing."
Roy
www.cvimmigration.com
[03-06-2008,09:54]
[**.55.217.239]
Roy |
|
spouse (in reply to: Language)
Would this be implemented with spousal immigrants as well?
[03-06-2008,10:46]
[**.206.170.146]
Jon |
(in reply to: Language)
That is crazy, I am pretty sure that a lot of native english speaker will have a hard passing that test. I work with people here where english is not their first language and their grammar skills are by far way better than a whole lot of native speakers around here.
Well,,,,,
I ain´t see nothin´ rong with that sentence no more.
Chuggalug
Bill
[03-06-2008,11:41]
[***.34.111.122]
Bill |
(in reply to: Language)
"It?s all in the accent you?re used to hearing."... [from Roy]
I am from an US American Colonized country. We are adopting an American accent in school, offices and even in public. And it´s one of the decision making factor to choose from which country we should migrate to. By this way, it´s not hard for us to communicate with the citizens. Most of my countrymen have chosen Canada because of it´s accent is as close as the one we are using here. But for some reasons which we don´t understand, we need to undergo difficulties taking a British accent test.
Or may be we just need to wait in here and someone would have to say, "It´s the requirement and we must face it."...lol
[03-06-2008,20:55]
[***.97.134.223]
Marco |
(in reply to: Language)
A little History here regarding language tests.
Before you could check off FLUENT, WELL, WITH DIFFICULTY or NOT AT ALL.
Fluent got anyone the maximum points, well got you some points, but with difficulty got you zero points. You have to look at the question from any potential immigrant position.
Everyone who first language is not English or French would check off with difficulty unless they were vain. Any sailor speaking about sailing in not there first language should be fluent but take the sailor and ask him/her to discuss another topic their ability goes down.
I had a client who spoke well so since he was enrolled in English classes and had his own tutor we checked off fluent for English skills. His application was sent for an interview and two years later his English skills had not improved, they had decreased.
When asked about his English skills he claimed that his English tutor had moved back to London and he could not find another English instructor in a city of seven million. He lost!
Any three Visa Officers assessing an applicants English/French skills could come up with three separate opinions as to the applicants language skills.
They wanted to improve the situation but again have made it far worse. This comes from someone who recently failed a similar English test.
Good Luck all.
Roy
www,cvimmigration.com
[04-06-2008,07:40]
[**.52.216.232]
Roy |
|
