Canada to use IELTS English test for immigrants

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/hello-bonjour-language-tests-coming-for-some-immigrants/article2398540/

Starting this July, certain people immigrating under the provincial nominee program will face language testing.

The tests will be mandatory for those applying for semi- and low-skilled jobs and will assess listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities...

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Select+immigrant+workers+face+mandatory+language+testing+ministers/6442858/story.html

Kenney said low- and medium-skilled workers applying under the Provincial Nominee Program will be subject to mandatory English or French language testing, and will be required to meet a minimum standard for speaking, reading, writing and listening in one of Canada’s two official languages.

As a result, immigrants coming to Canada under the program will arrive with much better language skills and will be selected for the impact they can have on Canada’s economy, he said in a news release.

“We have supported enormous growth in the number of provincial nominees in recent years because it makes sense for the provinces and territories to have the flexibility to meet regional needs.”

The cost of the tests will be paid by the applicant or their prospective employer.

The changes take effect July 1, and will not affect workers already approved before that point.

The new language requirements will impact tradespeople, those in manufacturing, sales and services, as well as certain clerical and assistant categories.

Applicants will be required to provide valid test scores from a designated testing agency.

Temporary foreign workers who arrive before July 1, 2012 and transition to the provincial nominee program within a year have a one-time exemption.

More than 38,000 workers and their families came to Canada last year through the program which gives the provinces and territories a greater say in immigration in a bid to fill gaps in their local labour markets.

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D - as always, the inherent difficulty of English is a barrier to immigrants. A decent IAL (international auxiliary language) would bypass this issue.

D - what is the test? It's the IELTS.

http://www.immigration.ca/permres-independent-languagetesting.asp

The Federal skilled worker class is point based and confers permanent resident status to applicants who are able to demonstrate an ability to become economically established in Canada. Applicants are assessed under 6 factors and numerous sub factors of assessment providing for 100 points. The language factor accounts for up to 24 points of this total.

The IELTS language test evaluates applicants under a series of benchmarks. Benchmarks are measured on a scale of 1 to 9 corresponding to an applicant’s proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and understanding. Benchmark results are then “converted” into a language score for immigration purposes. A benchmark of 7.0 to 9.0 for any of the four skill areas will earn the applicant a total of 4 points for each skill area resulting in a total possible score of 16 points under the skilled worker language factor. This is called high proficiency.

A benchmark of 5.0 through 6.9 will result in 2 points per skill. A benchmark of 4.0 to 4.9, will result in 1 point for each skill area with a maximum of 2 points across the four skill areas at this low benchmark. A benchmark under 4.0 will not result in any points for the referenced skills.

Additional points above 16 towards the availability of 24 points under the language factor, are awarded under the applicant’s second language proficiency (French).

D - the site is right: this test is made for England and Australia, not Canada! I think this is a bias that favours former British colonies such as India over other countries such as China.
D - A skilled worker who wants to move to Canada should read British newspapers, and listen to British news in order to familiarize themselves with the 'feel' of British English. What Canada really needs is a unique Canadian version of the IELTS test.

http://www.ielts.org/test_takers_information/test_sample.aspx
(D - this site is a good source of sample questions!)

http://www.ielts-exam.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=15&id=35&Itemid=64
(D - here are more sample test questions.)

D - some of the questions are not formed well. Talking about "300mm" instead of 30cm or "1 foot" is just clumsy.

D - I wrote the security guard test for Canada. The wording on questions was too complicated. When the test was done, 3 foreign-born non-Anglophone men were clearly frustrated by the test. I do not see how a complicated written English test is a useful measure of what a security guard actually does at work.

http://englishpronunciationblueprint.com/invitation-to-join-5/?gclid=CLS__N7etq8CFbMEQAod_EePgg

D - I have a slight auditory processing problem. It makes accents even more difficult for me. Reducing one's foreign accent makes conversational English more clear and easy for listeners.
D - just keep in mind that an adult's brain cannot 'hear' English sounds not used in their other language. You need to learn visually and tactilely to place you mouth in the correct position.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-brain-doubts-accent

Of the many indignities international students endure, accent discrimination may be the most mortifying, in part because it is still widely accepted in our society. Like skin color or attire, accent is a characteristic we routinely use to identify someone as unfamiliar or foreign ... Moreover, employers who deny jobs to non-native speakers can protect themselves by arguing that a foreign accent impairs communication skills essential to the workplace.
(D - if the job involves much spoken communication, that may very well be true.)

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D - I volunteered for an improv theatre skit through the YMCA. It was called "Coming To Canada" and involved frustrating scenarios that immigrants encounter in Canada.
I was dismayed to learn that we refuse to recognize many qualifications as valid for work here, even though it was part of why we allowed an immigrant in the first place!
Some certifications require a year of work in that field in Canada before we will recognize it. McGuinty's plan to help new immigrants get work experience here would have helped. After all, don't we want qualified workers working at what they are qualified for? Making somebody with an advanced degree engage in menial labour is not helpful to either the new immigrant or Canada.

cost of illiteracy. Globish critique

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/illiteracy-costs-japans-economy-87-78-billion-world-literacy-foundation

(D - the G&M this weekend claimed that a single PERCENT of increased literacy is worth $34 BILLION to Canada.)

A new report released on Thursday shows the social and economic impact of literacy to Japan is $87.78 billion.

The report, from the World Literacy Foundation, shows that more than 800 million people across the world lack the basic reading and writing skills needed to accomplish simple tasks such as reading a medicine label or filling out a job application, costing the global economy more than $1.19 trillion a year.

“The Economic and Social Cost of Illiteracy” looks at the cost of illiteracy in emerging and developing countries, as well as the cost of functional illiteracy in the developed world. It shows more than one in five people across the globe can’t read or write, and more than 100 million children don’t go to school each day.

The report’s co-author Andrew Kay says Japan needs to do more to make serious in-roads to addressing the level of illiteracy in the country.

Often, the end result of low literacy levels is trapping people in a cycle of poverty, poor health, limited employment opportunities, reduced income potential and low productivity in businesses

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D - I was watching a video on Globish. In the tradition of Ogden, the author claims only 1500 words can serve the needs of international business.
This controlled language (a subset of Standard English)

Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere.[1] It uses a subset of standard English grammar, and a list of 1500 English words. Nerriere claims it is "not a language" in and of itself,[2] but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business. (Wiki)

Criticisms:

- According to CIA's "World Factbook", native English speakers represent only 4.68% of the world population.
- Globish is criticized because the systemic principles for its elaboration are nowhere explained.

D - my critism is as follows. While it may render ESL as spoken easier for a native English speaker to understand (more regular, less mistakes), Globish will NOT render spoken Standard English any easier to understand in return.
In fact, the (false) expectation of regular rules and single ways to say things in English will lead them astray. A native English speaker will not be clearly understood when he responds to fairly understood Globish by an ESL speaker.
Globish also ignores certain integral and unremovable elements of English that will be difficult for foreign speakers. Reforms (or a revolt) of sufficient radicalness to address these concerns would render such a "Globish Plus" difficult to understand for a Standard English speaker. Examples include a broad selection of phonemes (about 40), as well as complex consonant clusters and the use of vowel diphthongs, as well as an elaborate syllable stress system.
Here we see the conundrum of attempting to reform an existing natural language that was NOT rationally designed from carefully selected core principles. The speakers of cultural and national Englishes find it either unacceptable to learn a "lite" more limited version of English to communicate with ESLers (English as Second Language), or find limiting their usage of possible ways to express ideas in English as difficult as simply learning a new IAL (aux-lang - auxiliary language) in the first place! A simple example of this would be as follows:
1) we posit that our special "English Lite" can only use the terms "more" or "less" to denote comparative terms.
2) E.g. we cannot use the terms "bigger", "smaller", "better" or "worse" now.
3) I.e. we must use the terms "more big" and "more good" instead.
How long before the Standard English speaker stops concentrating on HOW to say an idea, and defaults to Standard English as they fixate on WHAT they wish to say?
This is only 1 of a great many factors such a speaker of "lite" English would need to keep in mind.

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D - this seems to be the most complete listing of it. I was hard pressed to find written examples of Globish.

http://www.earthhealing.info/SIGLOBSH07_2.htm

The listing of my 1,500 basic "Globish" words (black-underlined) is quite similar to the existing Internet Globish listing (in bold letters). Some 195 words that have been added (++) (underlined), and 195 words that have been combined, removed or substituted by existing words are in bold (--). When the two listings are the same, the word is made bold and underlined (XX). When words are combined (e.g. with + in) or are forms of a basic stem (e.g., inform and "information"), we include both under one heading.

ACT -s, -ual, -ually, -ed, -ing Activity lack of {on, up, with}
of doing "Action"
-- [Actor] lack of Inactivity
++ Active Activity
-- [Activist]
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D - note that activist if derived from "ACTIVe" and not just "ACT".
Contrast with a term I pick randomly, Marxist.
Contrast with made up terms such as countryist and whiteist.
What Sapir said still applies.
" Anyone who takes the trouble to examine these examples carefully will soon see that behind a superficial appearance of simplicity there is concealed a perfect hornet's nest of bizarre and arbitrary usages. "
D - explicitly acknowledging what complexity is actually required for overt clarity is better than hiding behind the mock simplicity of a nat-lang (natural languuage).

D - while pondering how simple English could be made, I came up with the following 2 examples for a "lite" version.
1) YOUR. Your XYZ. the XYZ of you. Ergo, replace "your" with "of you". Also, "of" is quite vague, and does not clearly denote possession.

1. (used to indicate distance or direction from, separation, deprivation, etc.): within a mile of the church; south of Omaha; to be robbed of one's money.
2. (used to indicate derivation, origin, or source): a man of good family; the plays of Shakespeare; a piece of cake.
3. (used to indicate cause, motive, occasion, or reason): to die of hunger.
4. (used to indicate material, component parts, substance, or contents): a dress of silk; an apartment of three rooms; a book of poems; a package of cheese.
5. (used to indicate apposition or identity): Is that idiot of a salesman calling again?


2) QUICKLY. With quickness. This suffers from the fact that quick - an adjective- is the simplest form, while in many English words, the adjective is not the more basic form.

D - in summary, an attempt to rationalize an existing natural language, in this case English, rapidly suffers from a lack of mutual intelligibility with native speakers if it gets more than just superficially reformed.

Sapir's Essay on IALs. EVERYONE will want to read it.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/0520055942?&PID=31879
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/5037/sapir.html

D: Sapir starts from the opposite position as Zamenhof.
Z's preface assumes a shared enthusiasm for aux-langs.
With that fatal assumption, he leaps into the gist of the language.
Sadly, that very assumption is the key sticking point.

Sapir tackles the job of selling an aux-lang to a skeptical reader head-on.
And does a brilliant job of doing so.
He exposes the hidden complexity of English (and French) that hides behind the apparent simplicity. He points out how for a native speaker it can be nearly impossible to step outside his bias and see for the first time just how HARD the language can truly be.
I suspect this is aggravated by academic settings. I work in a factory with laypeople that can sometimes be unsure whether to use these or they or them, don't understand strong/weak verbs, and so forth. I see that even after a lifetime of exposure, my many smart educated friends STILL have not mastered their native tongue in writing!

I think we Canucks have it worst. I was reading over a list of commonly misspelled words. To my surprise, some -ce/-se endings tripped me up, like practice and practise.
I am never sure if I am thinking of the British or American spelling conventions.

Is the medium the message? Well, if the medium is a big enough mess, the message must be delayed in favour of teaching a poor medium far longer than need be.
Every hour spent teaching erratic English spelling (medium) is an hour lost to educators for teaching CONTENT (history, geography, et al).

D: and now a brief summary of the essay...

It is not uncommon to hear it said by those who stand somewhat outside the international language question that some such regular system as Esperanto is theoretically desirable, but that it is of little use to work for it because English is already de facto the international language of modern times - if not altogether at the moment, then in the immediate future - that English is simple enough and regular enough to satisfy all practical requirements, and that the precise form of it as an international language may well be left to historical and psychological factors that one need not worry about in advance.
A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services
One speaks of a `necessary evil'.
Too much is not made, as a rule, of any specific difficulty in linguistic communication, but the cumulative effect of these difficulties is stupendous in magnitude. Sooner or later one chafes and begins to wonder whether the evil is as `necessary' as tradition would have it
Those who argue in this spirit invariably pride themselves on being `practical', and, like all `practical' people, they are apt to argue without their host.

I spoke before about the illusions that the average man has about the nature of his own language. It will help to clarify matters if we take a look at English from the standpoint of simplicity, regularity, logic, richness, and creativeness.
One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb.
At first blush this looks like a most engaging rule but a little examination convinces us that the supposed simplicity of word-building is a mirage.
Anyone who takes the trouble to examine these examples carefully will soon see that behind a superficial appearance of simplicity there is concealed a perfect hornet's nest of bizarre and arbitrary usages. To those of us who speak English from the earliest years of our childhood these difficulties do not readily appear. To one who comes to English from a language which possesses a totally different structure such facts as these. We can "give a person a shove" or "a push," but we cannot "give him a move" nor "a drop" (in the sense of causing him to drop). We can "give one help," but we "give obedience," not "obey are disconcerting.
A complete examination, in short, of all cases in which the verb functions as a noun would disclose two exceedingly cheerless facts: that there is a considerable number of distinct senses in which the verb may be so employed, though no rule can be given as to which of these possible senses is the proper one in any particular case or whether only one or more than one such meaning is possible; and that in many cases no such nouns may be formed at all, but that either nouns of an entirely different formation must be used or else that they are not possible at all.
Another example of apparent, but only apparent, simplicity in English is the use of such vague verbs as `to put' and `to get'. To us the verb `put' is a very simple matter, both in form and in use. Actually it is an amazingly difficult word to learn to use and no rules can be given either for its employment or for its avoidance.
These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages. In fact, one may go so far as to say that it is precisely the apparent simplicity of structure which is suggested by the formal simplicity of many languages which is responsible for much slovenliness in thought, and even for the creation of imaginary problems in philosophy. What has been said of simplicity applies equally to regularity and logic, as some of our examples have already indicated. No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.

More important is the question of creativeness. Here there are many illusions. All languages, even the most primitive, have very real powers of creating new words and combinations of words as they are needed, but the theoretical possibilities of creation are in most of those national languages which are of importance for the international language question thwarted by all sorts of irrelevant factors that would not apply in a constructed language.
English, for instance, has a great many formal resources at its disposal which it seems unable to use adequately; for instance, there is no reason why the suffix -ness should not be used to make up an unlimited number of words indicating quality, such as `smallness' and`opaqueness,' yet we know that only a limited number of such forms is possible. One says `width,' not `wideness'; `beauty,' not `beautifulness.'

***We see, then, that no national language really corresponds in spirit to the analytic and creative spirit of modern times.***

D: I was inspired by that line!
Our languages ought to capture the spirit of the times.
I'd say of modern times. By that I mean based soundly on concepts of space, time and math. Logic and ethics. The very essence of modern (and I hope future!) humanity.

QOTD: Sapir.
" ... an international language which is as rich as any now known to us, is far more creative in its possibilities, and is infinitely simpler, more regular, and more logical than any of them. "