The current issues and trends in language assessment in India – The Financial Express

By Elisabeth Levi

English proficiency is crucial to economic success in our globally connected reality. The particular increased demands for higher levels of English skills across a much wider range associated with jobs drives a need for more effective, easily accessible, and fair assessments. Such assessments are available, but they are not widely in use in Indian.

Adopting more up-to-date assessments that use the latest technologies will benefit both individuals and companies. Here are usually some of the features to consider:

Accent agnostic testing – India is the diverse nation with more than 100 languages. The varied cultures, dialects plus accents often impact spoken English as well. For a test to be unbiased, it must assess the particular clarity and comprehensibility of speech without consideration in order to accent. This ensures that the individuals are tested based on their skill, not on their accents.

Accessibility – Many job functions are able to be performed remotely or through hybrid working. However, this convenience has not been extended to language assessment tests yet. Travelling to designated centres on specific dates makes screening inconvenient plus limits access disproportionately for those living within smaller cities, towns, and villages – the majority of Indians. Internet-based assessments can help increase access plus convenience.

Test security – Current technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) allow for user verification, test protection, and prevent cheating. Choosing a test with these features helps to make testing fairer and more secure. An additional benefit associated with using technology to achieve these goals is that they can be implemented remotely.

Comprehensive evaluation – Language expertise will be a holistic skill which encompasses reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Each of these abilities comprises several subskills which usually contribute to effective communication. An assessment needs to evaluate all these in order to accurately provide an individual’s language proficiency level. Most tests in India today assess only a single aspect of the vocabulary. Choosing a more comprehensive test allows employers to ensure that their own workforce can communicate effectively in British.

Affordability – The majority of English checks in India are expensive. When testing is usually too expensive, academic institutions and small and medium scale businesses often choose to forgo effective testing, or even they limit their applicant pool to candidates who can afford the particular credentials provided by the high cost testing. The results are either a lack of The english language proficient workers, or a lack of opportunities for people and SMBs to find their particular perfect match. Lower cost exams offer the possibility of broader scale tests.

Alignment to International Standards – Using international standards increases the transparency associated with results and allows the same tests to be used within India and throughout the world. Comparability of results helps all stakeholders to understand the levels associated with English needed to perform different jobs. This assists companies in order to choose the most capable candidates plus helps the particular candidates to prepare for their chosen careers.

There are a few solutions upon the market that meet international standards of language assessment and have many or all of the features described. The Association of Vocabulary Testers within Europe (ALTE) lists tests such as Speak now, Learning Matters, and Progos along with others, and can serve as the resource with regard to choosing assessments that fulfill the needs of companies, educational organizations, job applicants, plus students.

The particular author of this article is the VP of Linguistics, Assessment and Research at Speaknow. Views expressed are usually personal .