Introduction
In today's globalized world, the art of communication transcends borders, making the roles of interpreters and translators crucial. This article delves into the complexities of language proficiency testing, primarily focusing on how it pertains to these vital services. Led by industry experts Gabe Cruz and Bill Hindell at a recent webinar hosted by Cross-Cultural Communications, we explore testing standards, methodologies, and best practices that ensure qualified services in interpreting and translation.
Understanding Language Proficiency Testing
Language proficiency testing is not merely about assessing knowledge of vocabulary or grammar. Instead, it evaluates the real-world abilities of an individual to understand, interpret, and convey information in a given language. For interpreters and translators, proficiency is paramount as it directly impacts communication accuracy and effectiveness.
Types of Language Tests
- Proficiency Tests: These measure an individual's overall language abilities in real-world scenarios. They often include various components such as speaking, writing, reading, and listening.
- Performance Tests: Specifically designed for certain professional domains, such as medical or legal interpreting, these tests assess an individual's ability to handle domain-specific language and situations.
- Hybrid Tests: Combining live and machine-scored elements, hybrid tests offer the benefits of convenience and scalability while ensuring human evaluation.
- Machine-Scored Tests: These are cost-effective and available at any time; however, they must be validated carefully to ensure reliability, especially at higher proficiency levels.
The Importance of Selecting the Right Type of Test
Choosing the correct type of test is a critical step for anyone seeking to certify their skills as an interpreter or translator. Some tests focus too broadly, potentially missing essential skills specific to targeted interpreting environments. For instance, an interpreter working primarily in medical settings may not require the same proficiency as one interpreting legal proceedings.
The Role of Standards in Language Testing
Standards provide a framework for evaluating language proficiency. Various organizations have developed guidelines to support fair and effective assessments:
- ILR Scale (Interagency Language Roundtable): Widely used by U.S. government agencies, this scale helps gauge proficiency across five different levels.
- ACTFL Scale (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages): This scale complements the ILR, particularly useful in educational contexts.
- CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference): Provides a standard framework for assessing language proficiency across Europe.
Understanding these frameworks is crucial for both organizations and individuals when choosing appropriate tests that reflect true language proficiency.
How to Prepare for Language Proficiency Testing
Preparation for these assessments can significantly affect outcomes:
- Practice: Engage in active language practice; use available resources such as community college classes or language exchange groups.
- Mock Tests: Participate in mock assessments to familiarize yourself with the test format and types of questions.
- Feedback: Seek constructive feedback from qualified professionals to identify areas for improvement.
Evaluating the Quality of Tests
When assessing potential language proficiency tests, consider the following factors:
- Reliability: Look for validation studies that demonstrate consistent results and effectiveness of the test.
- Test Administration: Ensure that the testing environment and evaluators are properly trained and knowledgeable to eliminate bias or discrepancies.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Weigh the costs against the benefits; sometimes, opting for screening proficiency tests can be more cost-efficient before pursuing more expensive skills assessments.
Conclusion
Language proficiency testing plays a crucial role in maintaining high standards for interpreters and translators. Understanding the different types of tests, frameworks, and preparation methods ensures that language services professionals can be adequately assessed and certified. As our global community continues to grow, so too does the importance of effective and accurate language communication.
okay it is 11 30 are we ready to roll hi um gabe
ready all right welcome everyone uh as you start coming in um oh and gabe if you could keep them
keep us large and yeah okay um welcome everyone
we are here and looking forward to welcoming you to an absolutely unique
unprecedented webinar on the subject of language proficiency testing and language
assessment as it relates to interpreters and translators primarily
language services in general and it is being presented by well hosted by cross-cultural
communications i'm marjorie bancroft welcoming you here today i'm the director and founder of cross-cultural
communications but your presenters are are the key um they are
two industry experts that i've known and this may come as a surprise gabe i have gabe cruz i have known you since 2008 i
was just parsing in my head the other day and bill since 2010. that is a long time that i have been watching these
guys in action um right through many years in the industry um where not only were they working on language testing
research related to language testing the standards for it but bill hindell is actually still to
this day chairing the astm this is one of the two biggest associate organizations in the world i
know for creating standards the astm international committee on language testing
is being led by the capable leadership of bill under many hats that he has worn and gabe um
we got to know because we had for years were working with him to test our interpreters who were taking
our interpreter training i love them because they are obsessed with language testing they are obsessed with doing it
right so obsessed that they went off and created their own company parent in order to do it exactly as right as they
believe it should be done they're complete research nerds wanting to make sure that everything is is quality
driven and works but the best of all is that they can explain things about language testing in a way that you will
understand and i want you to pass the word on this recording will be free it will be sent
out to you the link will be sent out in 24 hours along with your certificate and
atacu's and you will be able to share it with anybody please do please do please do share it widely there is no webinar
i've ever heard of like this prepare to understand language testing probably for the first time in your lives enjoy
you will have fun all right let's
okay well thanks marjorie that was uh that was quite the uh introduction
i've never heard anyone say so many nice things about bill before that was really uh very nice
um this uh for free you just talked about you should talk to my wife
don't worry everyone bill will have his revenge i'm sure before this webinar is done
um well one of the things that we have to do here is title a little bit about ourselves marjorie
got us started um bill doesn't like to talk about himself very much so i figured i'd help him out
here uh he's a humble man to a fault i would say but uh not he
wouldn't say that he's he's like bill's done an amazing amount in his career in language testing um
he's been in language testing for most of his adult life as far as i can tell
and he knows it as well as he knows anything in addition to being uh the chairperson
of the astm committee on language assessments uh he's an active member in the ilr
community which is the interagency language roundtable which is the us government's kind of
monthly meeting or organization on language testing he's really done an enormous amount in
testing and i'm very happy to be partnered with him on
our company together which is called parrot which we started back in 2015. i spent about 20 years
at language testing international which is the actful testing office
that was uh really my introduction to language testing and uh marjorie is right i don't know what happened to me
along the way but some maybe i was dropped in my head as a kid but i i do love language testing
um i don't know if i'm a nerd of language testing bill is really
the nerd of language testing i'm just uh i'm here it's just with him and uh but i i love it and i
think that there's an enormous amount that people can learn about language testing i know that in the past six
years i learned an enormous amount i i would say six years ago i thought i knew more about it than i do now
um and in this this deck here i think we'll go over some of it and hopefully
all of you will know more about it after the end of this uh bill is there anything you want to
add to this no no no i'm going to let that one lie i think you did a fantastic great job
there gabe thank you very much sir um
so uh the first question that that we like to ask is really what is a language test
as you can see on this slide there's there's a lot of different types of language tests um
i don't want to go through all of them the point of this slide is really just to show that the term language test
isn't really enough it doesn't just tell you enough of what you're about to either purchase or take you know there
needs to be more to it is it a vocabulary test is it a speaking test is it a proficiency test
is it a performance test you know there's all these different types of tests and they're all completely
different you know if you're going to be an interpreter do you need an interpreter skills assessment sounds
like a good idea but do you also need a listening test or a speaking proficiency test you know
what are the types of tests that you need is a toefl test enough of an english test
for you you know there's a lot of different types of tests and making sure that you
pick the right test is absolutely the first critical step there
do you want to just talk i know i there was a long list of tests there could you go back that one one slide
i think my it might be interesting folks i wouldn't go to like you said let's have mercy on our audience and not go
through all of them but i think kind of the difference between performance and proficiency really briefly might be
interesting could you talk a little bit about what the difference between performance in a language and
proficiency in a language why yes i can so
so proficiency tests measure real world ability right what you can do with the language in a real life situation so
when you're taking a proficiency test the questions are going to be designed to simulate real world
conversation or real world scenarios in a performance test they're going to be
what we call domain specific right they're going to be a medical uh
medical bilingual staff medical test right it can be specific to a an industry and even a
position and then the rating level that's produced is going to be
a rating level of that person's ability in that specific domain it's very different than a proficiency
test a proficiency tests can be often used in place of a performance test but a
performance test doesn't always replace the proficiency test would you agree with that there bell i
would 100 and i think it's it's really interesting when you apply it to the interpretive field and the translator
field because there are like specific domains in which interpreters often work so you may get people who specialize in
medical interpreting who maybe should not work in a court environment and vice versa so the language skills there are
domain specific in that they they focus on a particular professional domain called medical
um marketing whatever what escort whatever it is you know the domain that they're focusing i thought that was was
useful to point out but yeah i think that's fine yeah there's
there's also you know when we um when people first come into testing and they uh
they they give us a call or they they talk to us they usually start out by saying i need you know four skills of
testing right reading listening writing and speaking because the persons could technically be doing everything
and usually what it gets down to is that they wind up doing the productive skills right speaking and writing and there's a
valid reason for that right very often there's well there's a lot of research that suggests a person's
productive skill meaning speaking or writing is going to be the lower score
when compared to the receptive skill which is reading or listening basically what that's saying is that
it's harder to speak than it is to listen and it's harder to write than it is to read
which makes a lot of sense and i'm sure you've heard people will say i uh
you know i speak a little spanish but i understand much more than i speak which is very true for for me
um you know if i understand three out of four words in a sentence i could probably put together the meaning of it
but if you ask me to create it i wouldn't be able to do it so uh very often that's just a little
validated shortcut that people can take rather than spending the time and money to test all those skills
so here are uh the three different types of categories of testing right the the
first one is the live test which is kind of the old standard right that's been around since since the first
language test that was ever created that i'm aware of was a live test was a uh one of the ones was certainly the opi uh
by actful the oral proficiency interview that was done in person or over the phone
and that consists of a tester interviewing a candidate on the phone or in person
what happened with that test is that it became incredibly difficult to scale right so as more and more people started
realizing the value and uh the need for language assessments testing the needs for testing went went
higher and higher and the ability to do that testing at anything close to a reasonable amount
of money um became just harder and harder if not leaning towards
impossible so what was created was this what i call the hybrid test you probably won't find
that term anywhere else because i just made it up like a week ago so but uh it what i mean by that is that
you're taking a um it's like a little bit of the live test and a little bit of the machine score
right in that it's delivered by computer but it's still rated by a live person
so what what happens is there is you get the convenience of computer testing a live person as opposed to a dead one as
a live friend as opposed to a dead race and all the raiders out there
all due respect to raiders but um see now you got me in trouble the convenience of it of an internet
delivered test is incredibly significant right you can test people 24 7 anytime you want and
then when the test is done the files can be sent to a live radar or to a raider to evaluate
so the amount of testing you can now do around the world becomes
infinitely larger the last category is one that i have a particular uh yes yes
bill can i really mention one very briefly i'll be real brief i promise there's also live tests and internet
deliver tests there's also one significant difference which he didn't mention
the tester plays a can play an outsized role in live tests if you have a tester who is
positive encouraging and so on you might do better than a tester who reaches the end of the day they've delivered four or
five oral proficiency interviews and they're ready for a cocktail around now they want to get off that call
so one of the downsides of live tests is is out for the upside it's a human being on the end and human beings treat people
differently so one of the downsides is you've got to do a lot of training you've got to do a
lot of norming to make sure that the candidate experience is exactly the same when you have four five ten twenty
thirty different testers all delivering the same type of test but the candidate experience wants to be as similar as
possible for every candidate for life tests that's really hard for internet delivered test it's much much
easier yeah and we'll dig into a little more about that on the next slide
the machine scored testing is
i don't know if it's relatively new but it's been around probably going back like 10 years or so even longer
but what that is is just an internet delivered test that is then computer rated or computer scored
it's definitely the least expensive option uh and
there are a number of concerns with that type of testing i could go on and on and on about
concerns i don't want to do that i get very excited i start sweating it's not good
for anyone so i'm gonna leave that be right there um and let's uh let's talk a little bit
about the two main types of testing and which are
certainly the most popular i think in terms of interpreting and any types of
high-stakes situations uh for testing computer scored testing is not really used in high-stakes environments um live
tests actually despite the fact that they're significantly expensive right the average cost of the live test is
probably i mean it ranges it could go anywhere from like about 70
to about 250 it's a very large range and one of the probably the biggest cost
of that is actually not just the test itself it's in in scheduling the test and
managing the test that you know it has to be at a specific time you know it's
it starts like for example in order to book your test you need to provide three windows of time of like two hours each
right so it's it's a very big commitment from the tester
um or from the individual and then the tester will come back and schedule a time it's just
it's it's very labor uh labor heavy uh and then of course you have to be on time and you have to worry about the
candidate being on time if they're not on time then there's cost and it's just uh there's a lot of challenges with live
testing and of course the potential variance tester quality which is something bill
jumped in with early just for us i'm glad you anticipated my concerns gabe and it's always appreciated
uh the hybrid test and you know of course bill's right and he's honestly he's
almost always right uh but there is the tester plays a huge role and when we when we did studies evaluating the
similarity of ratings between a live test and this one of these hybrid tests the scores are incredibly high uh the
this the reliability rate is incredibly high i think was just under 90
and that was done a long time ago before um you know the
the demand or the use of uh interacting with uh people over the phone conversing with various apps and things like that
became so common right one of the things that we thought was impacting that ability uh to have even higher
reliability was people's natural comfort level interacting with the computer and having a conversation with an avatar or
something like that so um now that that's so common we think that
the reliability rate between the two tests would actually even be higher the convenience of hybrid testing you
know where the candidate can test it anytime they want there's no such thing as being late for a test there's no
management involved because the candidate doesn't have to come in for the test there's all sorts of you know
software packages that can provide security for the test um it's really a very convenient and
cost-effective option so that's why uh hybrid tests have really done uh incredibly well in terms
of language testing for high-stakes environments okay
looking at uh speaking tests and really any type of test uh in
language you want to also look at the different types of test items you know when you look at a test and you
take a demo right what are you looking for right i mean if you're not
if you don't go in with the plan they can kind of all look very similar right so it's important to know what you're
looking for when you go into a demo you know what types of questions are they asking
you know and there are um you know for example the the parrot test what we do
uh is use all role plays right that's just the way it's done it's not any better or worse in my opinion for today
i'm a neutral person uh but the other tests out there very often use standard question and answer you know uh
what's your name um you know you like playing basketball tell me about the last time you played
basketball you know role play scenario would be like
um tell me about a or i'm going to pretend i'm a hotel
operator and you pretend that you have an issue with your room give me a call and tell me what's wrong with your room
and ask me to book you a new road you know again these are proficiency test types of questions so we're asking
the candidate to act out a a situation that can be commonly found
in the real world right because we're trying to measure real world ability so looking at the types of questions is
a very important part of that and which you particularly which types of questions you'd like to see is is
entirely up to you and which ones you think is better is entirely up to you um
the delivery of the test is a phone delivered test which some tests are uh there are advantages to both right is
it a phone delivered test or a computer delivered tests both provide on-demand testing with the
phone test the questions are pre-recorded right but instead of having an avatar or videos or graphics to
deliver the questions it's just a recording which is okay you know it's up to you again if
that is a format that you're comfortable with and that you think is appropriate for
your specific needs there are you know different tests but they all really range in about that 20
to 30 minute length some do go as high as 40 minutes and those tests are the ones that cover a wider range of ability
and that's something we're going to look at a little more in depth in terms of measuring that ability
right after bill gives us another piece of information i'm going to show you what this is
i don't know about that um so i just wanted to talk a little bit about the the difference but not a
difference but some of one of the reasons that role play and standard q and a's are important and i will go into
a little bit later when we talk about sort of rating scales but one of the single sort of define one
of the defining criteria of the higher levels of language ability is to extend your ability to speech
beyond beyond yourself and your own experiences and talk about the world and things that
that are not personal to you so if you're doing standard questions
tell me about the last time you went on vacation or tell me about the last time you played basketball
that was never i don't i've never played basketball but it's about me
and that's good and it's important but those are typically lower level proficiency tasks
the higher level ones require you to talk about something beyond yourself something about the world something
about politics something about current events something about it will require you to
interpret the world beyond what happens to you and that's where i think role play questions become almost
almost essential to to integrate into the test if you're going to test at higher levels because you need to be
able to talk about things that are not directly personal to you so looking at the frameworks
and this is by frameworks we mean rating scales there are three main frameworks that are
really used uh there are others out there um but the three main ones out there the
ilr scale uh which is again the united states government's proficiency scale that is the most common proficiency
scale in the united states there's the act full scale which is second to the ilr scale in terms of
usage in the united states but axel is certainly a very well-known and very well-regarded scale
and then there's the common european framework which is the suffer scale which is
europe's proficiency scale the ilr scale is was developed i think was after world
war ii in the 70s and it was developed after the war and after the government
realized that developing language skills was absolutely critical to the defense of
the united states so they realized that they better create
some sort of scale in order to identify people's ability that could be consistent throughout the
department of defense and that's where the ilr scale was developed
and then they realized that there was no way to or that they had a test basically everyone coming out of
academia because there is no way to identify someone's ability on the ilr scale when
they were coming out of school they weren't taking ilr tests so what they did was they contracted or they gave a
grant to the modern languages association which is what
actual was spun out of i think just around the same time or maybe a little later but they gave
them a bunch of money and asked them to develop a new framework that would kind of
bridge the gap from academia to the department of defense and that's how the actual proficiency guidelines came to be
and that's why the actual proficiency guidelines are more delineated at the lower level while the ilr scale is more
delineated at the higher levels you know they kind of fit like that isn't that that's a good
illustration for you you got it now there you go and you can clap at the same time it's a wonderful trick
um the bill will dig in more to this a little later but basically what i'm trying to
say is that the axle and ilr scales kind of meet in the middle with the ilr scale
being at the top and the actual scale being at the bottom i'm going to move on from my
graphics now uh the common european framework is also at the
more heavily weighted towards the top and bill we'll break this down a little more
as we go through it um one important thing to note about the
scale and this i think a lot of people kind of get stuck on this right that you know moving up from say a
novice low to a novice mid or a novice high to an intermediate low or which is the actual scale or moving up from a one
to a one plus on the ilr scale is not the same as moving up say from an advanced high to a superior on the
actual scale or a four plus to a five on the ilr scale the higher you go on those scales the
broader the jump is from one level to the next and that's why
this little guy here he's gonna have a hard time getting up to level three and then four and then five
it's just the levels are so broad you know one of the things that uh is always kind of humorous to me is when
when you look at a language test there are so many out there now but some of them are actually scored uh proficiency
tests are scored on a point scale of one to a hundred right and that's the easiest sign that
there's something amiss here all right because how on earth do you validate someone being a
84 and someone being in 85 what on earth is the difference between the two in terms of their actual
real-world ability you know the only way these tests can make sense the only way they can work is by having very broad
levels you know it's it's critical to having a reliable test
um and bill certainly knows a lot more about the scale than i do so i will
let him jump in and uh correct anything i said if he wants to use my hand graphics he's welcome too those were new
to me today i'm very excited about them so feel free to use them bill i know i i actually thought you were doing a sort
of a pandemic era sanitizing motion no no no and then you can break it for a clap i
like it gabe i think that's going to be yo actually you've contributed a lot to the language testing industry over the
years but i think we this crowd today just witnessed you
do your biggest contributions you might have competition for chairperson of the astm committee so i'm
just just letting you know so let me talk a little bit about um the scales and i won't go on too much
because i'm a nice guy and it is incredibly dense and boring um
but the the fundamental thing i want you to take away from this slide if you take away anything is at the top there it's
monolingual so i know marjorie mentioned earlier that most of the the people on this on
this call will be interpreters or translators being monolingual doesn't really help
you to be an interpreter or translator right um but the proficiency scales only measure your ability in one language
so they're not the ilr and the actual proficiency scales don't tell you about how you can work back and forth between
languages they just tell you about how well you speak the language being tested so
there's no congruity judgment involved in there there's no knowledge of of you know interpreter ethics or anything like
that it's just how well you can speak the language the ilr scale has long sort of uh
verbose descriptions but i think the most important part is at ilr3 it's a five point scale
zero through to five with pluses but only at level three which is general professional proficiency does the ilr
suggest that you have the language capability needed to begin to function as an interpreter
um or a translator that ils3 the middle of the ilr scale so here on gabe's hands right here
that's the top of the of the actual scale the actual scale doesn't cover the higher levels of
the ilr scale it only covers the lower levels um i put down briefly the the things
that but it's too obtuse so let's just go through here and hopefully from this slide you'll get an idea of
if language were cooking what could somebody create at each level of proficiency all right so if you could
move all right so level zero zero cooking ability none i can maybe combine foods
level one i can prepare some dishes for example i can prepare
food it is cooking right technically speaking warming food up is cooking
but it's not really very good but that's level one on the scale level two hey now i'm starting to to cook with
real gas right i can actually do some recipes such as i can combine ingredients so i could
take my my little web-based you know food.com recipe and and create something now here's where it gets kind of
interesting three remember on the slide before i bet you don't remember because it's boring
but three is general professional proficiency the important word is professional there
at three you have to be able to do things that ordinarily i don't do when i'm cooking for my family or friends i'm
just preparing something that i like i already i'm a caterer already i can cater for small groups
that's not what people do every day in the kitchen right so the ilr-3
or the actual superior scale in proficiency it's really important that everybody understands that's beyond what
most people do every day three is catering now on the ilr scale let's look at four
four i'm a so i'm way better i don't know how what percentage of people that
cook are chefs it's got to be a vanishingly small percentage of people most people every day in the language
are not chefs in the language or in the kitchen five
is a master chef i don't even i mean i've never had the
the the sort of pleasure of eating in one of those restaurants but here's what you can do
here's the are you good gabe go on to the next one uh zero cooking ability so it's zero on
the island scale you mean we we skipped zero but zero you can't do anything right zero is here oh
just go zero is is bread and butter you're not cooking anything you're not warming
anything you're just putting butter on bread it's like an english sandwich right it american sandwiches are really
good i'm english english sandwiches bread butter and a little bit of ham you're done nothing else
allow one you can start to make things but you're still not going to really have a i've ever have much fun here you
can boil some together and you can add prague sauce but you're not making this from scratch remember you're doing it
you're just assembling ingredients but two you're starting to make things yourself you're starting to take raw
ingredients put them together and make something new out of those ingredients you make a hamburger out of it you can
make uh whatever you want there this is the level at which
interpretation or translation becomes possible is ilr3 you start doing lobster beast gr these
are not things that i ever cook for myself and i would think that so a test at which you are
are rating at ilr3 you are really really good in the
language to raid at ilr3 even though it's a five-point scale it's all in the middle of the scale lr3 is
really strong i love four i this is a meal that i had a a long
time ago um and still remember um but most people don't do this not most people nobody does this in
their kitchen right so when you transfer this to language you've got to start thinking about
proficiency scales as if you get a three or or a superior on three is the ilr scale superior is the actual scale um if
you're getting the three on there you're really really good you have a general professional ability to function in the
language all right gabe scoot on to the next one for me
so i think this is my last slide and then i'll hand you back into gabe's capable
hands so far we've been talking remember about monolingual proficiency those are the
ilr scales for speaking listening reading and writing and the actual scale they're monolingual the ilr also has a
scale for interpretation um
and and although it's a five-point scale it's i took this quote from the the
document itself it's only at three that it's all the necessary skills lying to ensure enable a reasonably accurate
not entirely just reasonably accurate reliable and trustworthy interpretation but the important difference that i
think it's important you understand that the middle of the scale is is still good but the most important thing to take
away from this is is that proficiency is monolingual if you're gonna do interpretation assessment then you need
a different scale and you need the ilr scale for interpretation not proficiency because it's not a one-to-one
correlation you can have ilr3 speaking skills in two languages to two separate tests and you
could be a lousy interpreter just because i have a camera i'm not a photographer just because i have a pen
and pencil i'm not an author right so so the ability to speak the languages is required of an interpreter but it's not
sufficient in and of itself there are lots and lots of other skills that need to be tested if you're if you're going
to give a rating on the interpretation scale so you know just to
recap i thought i was a pretty good cook i must say but i'm definitely not i i mean the three is
pretty high i mean so rob what was that so if i if i may so i have a a a
colleague who was actually there at the start of the development of the ilr scale uh a gentleman called party low um
fantastic gentleman but he maintained that most of native speech every day most of the speaking that we do in our
daily lives is at the two or two plus level so even though we may be capable of more
what we do every day is at the two or two plus level we very rarely have to push our language even as a native
speaker to push our language to the three and beyond because it's not required in
many day-to-day situations it only becomes required when you have to challenge yourself to do tasks that
require that kind of language skill uh my understanding is on the actual scale most most conversation takes place
at uh the advanced low even intermediate high levels yeah so that's that's consistent
with what i know so that means you're right obviously um
the uh i thought we'd include some examples of the different types of tests and there
are of course many other options for each one this is by no means
saying that these are quality tests or these are tests you should look at these are just examples of tests that we
consider to be you know well known so for the live test option the opi which is a
act actful test that is 165 dollars including that remote proctoring piece that allows the candidate to test
uh on their own basically and that's rated on the actual scale um i'm actually not going to read these
but what you can see here is that the
live test options are more expensive than the hybrid test options which are more expensive than
the machine scored test options the machine scored test options one important thing to note there is that
they're often rated on native scales right they're not using the actual scale the ilr scale or anything like that
because the way that they're evaluating communication especially in speaking which these are all speaking tests
um is just very different all right they're
almost always actually taking speech and converting it into text and then using the machine
scoring algorithms to evaluate written speech but that leaves a lot to be desired for a
number of reasons that i'm not going to get into um but the
machine scored testing is undoubtedly where the world is headed for probably everything but uh
if you want to use one of these tests i would encourage you to really look at the
the data on the tasks and how well they perform at the upper levels of ability my understanding or
my opinion is that they do very well at the lower levels of ability but when you start to get into those higher levels
that's where things get a little more difficult so um as with any test look at the
research before making a decision you know i would never suggest you take a company's word for it
when they say my test measures language uh measures speaking proficiency and does so
reliably uh it's incredibly important that you look at the data
look at the data so that you can see for yourself how that test works
why that test works and actually how well it works you know not every test is going to be
the same um developing a test costs a lot of money you know it's not cheap
um i can speak for my own self when i said uh you know i thought i knew more about
testing you know about seven years ago that was because that was before we tried to start parrot
and made every mistake possible um and i knew a lot about testing then um
it wasn't that we didn't know how to do it it's just that you know
i think confidence can get in the way and and money can can be an influencer but
there really is not a shortcut when it comes to developing a language test there is absolutely a science of testing
and that's really what i love so much about testing is that there's so much more than meets the eye
you know there's a whole world going on behind the scenes of every question you know what what the question is what
it's asking where in the test it's placed who's rating it like all of this
activity going behind the scenes bill raising his hand bill is also a big fan of the science of
testing and loves to talk about it right doesn't like all about himself but the science of testing he loves to talk
about so please this is going to be about myself i like that i'm just talking now because
i like the sound of my own voice bill if i may just intervene for a second we do have a lot of questions
coming up and then they are important and it's 12 i mean it's two minutes before okay
we'll move on great positive uh feedback so just to let you know okay not before choosing a test all right
make sure that you look at the studies that you look for rating reliability uh how well the test performs in an
independent study an independent meaning that you know it's not a look they're all
going to be paid for from the companies because no one else is going to do it for free
but it's important that the academic or that the researcher in my opinion again is a
strong affiliate has a strong affiliation to an academic institution and
ideally is not a corporate for hire researcher because you know that's the easiest ones to buy
um in an unpopular opinion but from the from all of us on the consumer side
we all know that's true right so uh looking at the study who's conducting the study the reliability stats it's
incredibly important um testing for the interpreter community
you know this five ease of professionalism it comes from a uh an academic journal that describes what
kind of what professionalism or what a profession is um
and testing if you look education ethics experience entity and uh what's the last one examination well
that's a nice one uh that's that's all kind of tied to testing and just so everyone's aware the best practice for
interpreter testing you start with a proficiency test and then you take an interpreter skills
assessment you know someone who speaks spanish and english at a very
high level doesn't necessarily make a good interpreter and someone with good interpreting skills doesn't mean they
have the necessary proficiency level to actually
be an interpreter say in the medical community or the legal field so it's important to have both and one
added benefit is the proficiency test is much less expensive than an interpreter skills assessment
so the proficiency test serves as like a screening tool for the isa it's just an important way
to to not only control quality but to control costs as well this is the
nbcmi and cchi approved uh proficiency or stats on the proficiency comment
component of the national certification all right they accept these three tests and these are
the scores it's a two plus on the ilr scale and advanced mid on the actful scale
this is all uh public knowledge this is uh bill you want to jump in here on the
astm real quick i think i think we've talked about it the astm is is putting together a standard guide to for people
who are interested in language testing um it's in review now and hopefully we'll be published this year no we're
nearly at the end of this year it's going to be january before it gets out there
but the important part was just what gabe said about screening tests to identify people who may make good
interpreters the only way you can identify a good interpreter for sure is to test their interpreting ability
so the main things right hopefully walking away from this everyone knows
that before you look at either testing yourself or bringing a test into an organization
for other people make sure you know what skills need to be tested right that's a critical
component obviously a good first step then to actually make sure you're comfortable with the framework that the
test is going to be rated on and making sure that the integrity of the test is protected this is
either through proctoring software or through actual test centers but that's a critical piece
of looking at a test and then of course the validation
studies and the types of questions used if you cover these five steps and looking at a test you will be very
likely to have a positive outcome with any test so
i think that is the end see that thank you i wrote the slide that said thank you all right so
uh and we do we thank you for joining in this is very important to both bill and i to try and
and share as much about testing uh as possible so people make the right decisions when looking at language tests
for themselves or others okay marjorie and i'll turn it over to you
yes please so i can ask you the uh zolium questions um i first want to start off by saying we've had tons of
appreciative comments and i'm so glad about that because it shows that you have hit accord you were
communicating comprehensively people loved there were so many comments about the cooking analogies i can't even tell
you uh including one that said fair warning i'm stealing this for future workshops presentations talks hopefully
janice that's with full attribution if you're listening and
you may be spreading the word via interpreters and not just this recording um
gabe and bill uh so without further ado let's jump to the questions um someone wrote i would have thought the receptive
skills need to be primary if not engaged in bilingual interpretation the productive skills are secondary
for production i'm not quite sure i followed that well yeah
maybe maybe my receptive skills are a little on the weak side well i i guess it has to do with this
confusion between the monolingual side of testing versus the bilingual side of of you know performance
and and maybe that's where the confusion is because i'm i'm also a bit confused by the question
but production skills i can answer what i think is is the
important part here which is so there are many many different types of interpretation and some or transcription
for example in which case you have to listen to to you know utterances in one language and then write them in a second
language you never actually have to spoke to produce in spoken format there are
agencies out there with three letters in their name that we of which we do not speak that that's all they do linguists
for those agencies just listen and then either gist or verbatim right out what is said you don't need
productive spoken skills there so it all really depends on what the end result you're trying to to to predict
performance on um as to whether you whether you need to test those listening skills and such
got it thank you uh bill this question is what can we do with
languages that can't be tested how can we start the process i don't think you have a happy answer to that question
well yeah dave do you want to take it oh
yeah um i mean there's a lot of languages that aren't tested you know there's far
more languages that aren't tested that are tested but if you absolutely need a
rating or an analysis of someone's ability the best way to go about it would be to
find speakers of the language i think that are at a that you can kind of trust from one way or another either through
education or experience or some way that you can trust their level of ability and
and try and bring them in to to the world of language assessments you know let them familiarize themselves
with a set of criteria uh and have them interview i would have at least
ideally two people that can interview the candidate a lot of a lot of times the reasons that
tests aren't developed in these other languages is because there's not enough demand for them
uh we did a test for marshallese once which is spoken in the marshall islands which is incredibly difficult the
internet was only available from like two to four each day um and it was just very difficult and it
was for the united states government who's the only one who would ever pay for something like that
um but it's uh it's what you do is you find people that you're confident can speak
the language and then try to bring them into some sort of criteria and then introduce
them to the candidate and try to that's the best you can do it's not perfect but it's better than nothing
all right thank you we'll see what happens it's a big question around the world when you think
that there's almost seven thousand languages in the world very few like efficiency tests
would you uh next question include an english proficiency test within the same testing window for an interpretation
skills test i know what my answer would be i'm very curious about your answer yeah yeah go ahead guys
here's that bus coming down the road i'm gonna i'm gonna suggest you you're just like bill tell me that he wants me to
answer that's all um the uh like i i believe that there should be a
little cooling off period between tests um but i don't think there is a standard um well i know there's no standard for
you know there should be two weeks of separation between tests um it's really up to the different organizations and
their comfort level as to uh you know if you want to test both the proficiency test and the interpreter
skills assessment in the same window but i would give a little space just because you want to worry about test taker
fatigue yeah and i would just add that part of the reason to do a screening test which
as dave mentioned is almost always significantly cheaper than an interpreter skills assessment
why you would jam them together and pay for both if you're going to do the screening test and they fail miserably
there's no point in doing the interpreter services it's actually ethically
one of the one that you really shouldn't have people take tests that you know they're
going to fail because it's a painful horrible experience right so i would certainly get they get you know find the
uh i did another hand motion there um so i would i would get the results of the the proficiency assessment first and
use that to determine who is more likely to do well on an interpretive skills assessment
thank you someone writes i was disappointed with the test i took when we went to do the
role play the proctor hadn't been in the country of the language for 25 years he had no
clue that affected my score because he didn't know modern terms that are common now and thought i was making up words my
question to you about that comment would be is do you think that's a common issue with raiders
is it something to be concerned about i mean this is what bill spoke about earlier when he was saying uh the
the potential impact of raider or tester quality we call them testers the person that's
delivering the test and then the raiders are the people who only rate the test so tester quality is largely dependent on
the person right and it's one of the reasons why uh
organizations really should when delivering live tests spent an enormous amount of time and money training those
people there's no shortcut to that but the test should be should be double rated
um which means that there should be another raider behind you which is unlikely to have that same kind of
weakness or concern of yours so that even if that was something you
experienced in your test you still still should be covered in the back end it should not affect your your experience
or your outcome sorry yeah and and gabe that is precisely one of the reasons why my
training agency we're not a testing agency we're a training agency but when we're training interpreters and test
them for the 40-hour program we would always get the double rated test so
big supporters i would not use a single rated test yeah i couldn't agree more couldn't agree
dangerous yeah um most of us
take the test this may be out of your bailiwick a bit most of us take the test that is required for certification as a
medical interpreter or a legal interpreter who is in charge of selecting the
appropriate test sometimes the most popular test is not the best for the certain
interpreting role to me this question gabe and bill reflects a bit of a lack of
understanding between language proficiency testing and testing that involves terminology in in in
language specific domains of professional interpreter specializations um so i don't know if you want to
comment on that the bigger picture question but this is a reality in our field as
you know people are being asked to take tests that that might be
created for medical interpreters or created for legal interpreters or that might just be
general language proficiency tests and then you take the performance test which approach do you recommend
or what comments do you have go ahead gabe um
so uh the test for the interpreters you're saying that they
they the organization that's testing them would test them with a uh a test that's
i think was not the desired test is that right that it was a yeah like for example instead of going to an
established generic language proficiency test right they might request one that has some medical terminology thrown in
oh i see i see um or some legal terminology thrown in um because basically the interpreter or translator
has no control over the test that's chosen by a specific hiring entity whether that is a court a hospital a
language company they just have to take whatever tests they're given right yeah this questioner knows that that's that's
that doesn't sound right you know i think yeah i mean look i can tell you that uh in my experience you know and
this is going back now about 22 years of doing this i've run into countless organizations that are
using a test for their candidates that make absolutely no sense i mean shockingly
no sense like and these are not it's not that the person isn't intelligent or something like that these are very
intelligent people that make sound decisions that just made a mind-boggling decision
and uh you know there there's on our side we can only try to encourage them to just
kind of see the light but from the candidate's perspective the only thing that i could recommend is
to in order to try and avoid the surprise of that situation is to try and get as
much advanced knowledge as you can of the test and then to do your homework on the specific type of test that they're
delivering and then to give your feedback to the can to the organization on what
your experience was because in most cases the people making decisions for tests
in my opinion maybe [Music] let's be generous and say 50 of them
have actually taken the test all right the other 50 don't really know what's on the test they were sold
something or told something and maybe it wasn't accurate maybe they don't even know what's really on the
test so your feedback would be very important to them and and just getting the word out about
everything that you have all learned by listening to bill and gabe today including you will all we had so many
questions gabe and bill about do we get the link do we get this recording do we get this recording this is really
valuable information and so you know andrew and i are reassuring everybody that yes yes yes they will get the
recording uh when you get 24 hour about 24 hours from now and you get the link to the recording
it will also come with a link to the powerpoint thank you uh bill and gabe for sharing that as well and the link to
your certificate um but that is that shows a real interest
but it also the comments also show how much they enjoyed your presentation and this is not something we usually get
we usually get the thank yous this is really valuable content this is important information we got all of that
for this too but people clearly also had a lot of fun with you um and and and definitely you
know one even commented do we have a gala dinner at this end after the cooking analogy
um and one commented there are many more superior of us and there are master
chefs around their people were engaged they were they were paying close attention and i really i just want to
thank you i mean i knew that would happen because i know you do um i think people also appreciated the
back and forth that you two have thank you so much i i i want to tell you game and bill i forgot to mention i stay on
afterwards it's the tradition just to answer questions related you know to to what we do in ccc and interpreting and
just generic questions but as you can see from from the chat uh one as we wish you a fund farewell for now uh there are
tons of thanks just pouring in as we speak and i'm sure people will spread the word about the
recording thank you so much both of you you're most welcome can i can i imagine just before you turn off the recording
the cooking one i need to thank rachel brooks at the fbi for that if it's attributed
i stole it so you can go ahead and steal it from rachel okay well we need to we need to find her
email and send her a big thank you um thank you
rachel from the fbi that's all that's would have to delete that sentence from the
recording absolutely absolutely okay well thank you thanks everybody
yeah take care thanks so much so everybody as is the tradition our found tradition at ccc i'm i'm staying
on just to answer not questions about like big questions about language proficiency testing i do know some some
basic things for sure um but about uh and by the way questions about our webinar series about
ccc about interpreting uh not so much translation thank you um decades ago left the field of
translation but i do want to reiterate you will get the recording you will get the
powerpoint um you will also have an opportunity like if they're we couldn't as always answer all the questions but
if there was a burning question that you had you can email us at ccc just info at cultureandlanguage.net andrew's usually
very good about typing that in this in the chat window um
and i do just have a couple of comments someone asked you know would you include
an english proficiency test within the same testing window as an interpretation skills test a lot
of the answer in from the interpreter training perspective would depend is this someone you're hiring right now as
a bilingual employee for um
you know someone you want to train as an interpreter because the idea is that you would do language
proficiency testing first to see if they're bilingual enough to interpret then give them the training
or even more advanced training and then test their interpreting skills there's no
point in testing their interpreting skills before you've given your training and some language companies do this you
know they'll give the interpretation skills first or even give it during the training but you really need a window
between the test the training if they're getting training and um ultimately the interpreting
skills test uh i also want to reiterate that what they said which is there's really no
point in giving an interpretive skills test or certification if they haven't had
a language proficiency test to show that they're sufficiently bonding well in the first place it's a waste of time it's a
waste of money it's very stressful for participants somebody's
also asking where reliable validation studies can be found reliable validation studies for what tests
every test has to have its own validation studies gabe and bill founded parrot parrot is still actively
conducting validation research it's very expensive it's very complicated they're very committed and they have well
actually they have done it and now they're in in the process of consolidating all that data and they've
done it before and they will do it again because validation is kind of an ongoing process
somebody say what is the best way to self-test any tools online that's a really good question i know that
the national center for state courts used to have practice tests for certification
skills testing because certification is like in our field it's like the ultimate
skills test right but for language proficiency testing the
only thing i ever saw was was kind of a tool kit um for for self-testing and i would have
to get my my hands on that um again it wasn't bad it wasn't bad um and then the center for applied
linguistics used to have tools on exactly this issue so you can google them
um i haven't asked in a million years so you'd have to find out if they still offer that
um i love this question alma and right why don't you share this info with all the
interpretation and translation organizations to set a standards for all of us nationally and or internationally
uh yeah that's it's it's a big frustration of mine that um in the language industry we do not adequately
understand language proficiency testing i i'm you know a linguistics nerd so it comes
more naturally to me to care about these things um
but remember you can spread the word the link to this recording is coming to you
you can share it with anybody it will be free just as it is to you they can listen to the recording and they can
spread the word oh somebody was asking them on their
thoughts on back interpretation for skill interpreting skill assessment please they're not interpreting
specialists james um this question came from our dear wonderful james plunkett so i don't know if they would have
answered that question but it's um you know what a lot of us think about uh back interpretation it has a lot of
problems we shouldn't go there how do you how can you study to get a good grade in the opi at ccc we get that
question a lot um we actually recommend um
that if you are an interpreter um and
and you want to take an opi or you did take an opi you didn't get the score you wanted first of all wait six months
there is no point in taking another test in two weeks second we actually recommend community college classes
um if if they have advanced classes in the language that's fine but if you're
if it's an english test um because most interpreters english is not their native language in this
country not not all by there's many native english speakers who are interpreters but if your weaker language
is in english then taking almost any community college class which are a lot cheaper than university classes will
improve your oral proficiency in general if you participate actively with other students
in class engaging with the material uh doing all your assignments um
it's for cost probably better than almost anything you
can do to get to that sort of third that superior or ilr3 level or at least two
plus because in our world we accept um advanced high act full or two plus
even though ideally it should be that professional level three um that they were saying the reality in our field is
we're just not there yet uh until interpreters are paid more we can't demand that they be there
um other questions oh wow someone said i think every
candidate is also afraid of of that the proctor has an accent that that's a legitimate concern i wonder if it's
becoming more common wow i'm a french interpreter and french is a
common language which is true however language specific certifications are scarce
do you have any recommend recommendation well i'm not aware of
maybe ata has french certification for translators that i don't know for interpreting um
in this country at least we do not have that um australia is getting which i believe does have it
is getting ready to slowly start moving its interpreter test certification um testing online so in a year or two that
might be a possibility meantime there is language proficiency testing not every company offers it i
know that language testing international offers french testing and if you have a language
proficiency test and start assembling a portfolio of other credentials including letters of recommendation including
academic transcripts and everything it's the portfolio that people will look
at and take seriously because they know that we don't have french interpreter certification at this point
in time but the language proficiency testing piece of that that certificate is important
um somebody's asking will you be sending the slides as well yes uh 24 hours after
roughly after this point in time you you will get the recording the link to the recording the
link to the powerpoint slides and the link to the to your certificate
hi marjorie the central problem of interpretive skills training is shortage of bilingual practice materials any
available for purchase at ccc um we are we do have um
the role both the role plays that currently exist in nine language pairs for the
um both the medical interpreter online 40-hour program or the community
interpreter online 40-hour program and we are thinking of making them available as bilingual practice materials
separately so that's a relevant question that could lead us to move in that direction in addition
uh we are right now examining the the first audio files for the next um set of programs uh related to remote
interpreting but it's it's also it's four language pairs not nine um but it is
bilingual practice materials um so that's that's something that you will hear about the minute it is available
uh looking through the uh what questions have
i not answered somebody's asking if they had to take toefl for e c f m g m d and i do not
know what that is so i cannot answer that question when i attended ccc training i saw
bilingual dialogues for consecutive interpreting for quite a few languages later i
searched but couldn't find any audio materials on the license trainer website now most of them are published materials
um so many of which i think are still
published it's a lot easier to get published role plays um
including a certain number in other languages in other language pairs with english
audio materials i think for sale i'm only aware of acebo which i think is a sibo.com a c e b as in boy oh
sibo.com um and the last i heard and that's court
interpreting they do have spanish for health care
but for the other languages it's only for for legal and and court interpreting um
[Music] i off the top of my head i'm not i'm not
seeing if anyone else knows of audio materials please feel right
um to write in in chat or um in the chat feature if you're if you're aware of any
we we would be happy to pass the word around it is
an excellent question and a real problem in the field um
[Music] somebody asked about the um cchi e to e study
we didn't have time to ask that question um i will say that as someone with a ba master's in linguistics and i'm a phd
dropout in arabic linguistics uh from a long time ago i have followed that test with interest and i take the research
behind it very very seriously i have from the very start i think it's the most promising thing we've seen in the
field for the answer to what do we do about all those languages that aren't the big
main languages that we have certification tasks for there is going to be and i'm one of the panelists um
fair disclosure i believe december 16th um a webinar by cchi on exactly that topic
so that you can learn more about it yes uh december 16th from one o'clock to two o'clock p.m
eastern time so go check their website and um if it's up there um it's it's a
community conversation so it's not like a webinar in that sense but it is it is a recorded um
conversation of panelists on on exactly that topic um
someone asked the examples of language tests that the speakers mentioned only available for companies to test their
potential hires are they also available directly to individuals and the answer is that they're directly available for
the most part the tests that they mention anything that isn't government testing
is mostly available either for companies to buy or for individuals to buy um whether the prices differ yes prices
can differ if companies have their special negotiated group you know bulk volume
purchase discount or whatever so you have to go to each individual company and and get their pricing i should warn
you that pricing might disappear from um
presentation um do you have good resources on the test development process that is a question
you might want to email to us and if so we will shoot it to them um
in order to get their answer from the horse's mouth and and pass it on to you it's a great
question um how do these scales compare to the cefr
scale those if you if you google it you can get a comparison i apologize
um if you google um you know ilr act fill c efr comparison
you will be able to to get that easily online um sorry sometimes the questions jump hello
what is your next webinar um someone is saying thank you for you said
your presentation's just wonderful and helpful that's a very sweet comment um andrew if you could post the date of the
next webinar it is in mid-january um i think it's i'm trying to see if my
calendar has it um the 19th january 19th at the at the same
time um but if andrew if you could post the title because that i do not remember
somebody is saying um oh thank you ida sarbasova for interested candidates she said
australia um through ngati which is um the national association of australian translators and interpreters i believe
has interpreter accreditation practice tests in open domain um we'll have to put that in our
resource section of our website thank you that is wonderful information
oh poor camilo i asked when would i be able to take the oral test for medical
interpreter certification in person and not online online services are terrible sorry thank
you that is a really good question and with omacron just debuting on the horizon
i'm not cchi and i'm not nbcmi and i'm not answering for either of them but i suspect that they themselves might not
have a an answer to that question it's it's such a hard world to predict
right now um okay
i'm looking to see if i have missed any questions
oh and by the way as andrew has mentioned if you do not get an email from us with the link to the recording
in the powerpoint etc in 24 hours uh check your spam we are finding that more and more things are going to spam
ourselves um and when you spread the word about the
recording unfortunately um anything to do with uh cus or certificates it's only for
people who attend live but they can at least see the valuable information for free
uh thank you for all your kind comments i think i have answered all the
questions i can see so without
further ado i want to thank you all for attending for all your questions for your time and for caring enough about
language proficiency testing to be here with us today uh once you get the link to that
recording please share it with everyone you know and help educate the world of large and our industry of translating
and interpreting in particular about the importance of language efficiency testing and how it works
uh thank you gabe and bill wherever you are right now take care everybody have a wonderful rest of your day bye for now
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