The Importance of Language Proficiency in the Workplace

a diverse group of professionals having a discussion In a recent study conducted by ACTFL, it was reported that 9 out of 10 U.S. employers rely on “U.S. based employees with language skills other than English, with one-third (32 percent) reporting a high dependency.” (p. 5). With this high demand for bilingual and multilingual professionals, the bar has been raised on the importance of validated language proficiency in the workplace. The demographic shift we are experiencing in the U.S. is creating an increasingly multilingual and multicultural society, and American employers are quickly learning that approximately “65 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English (40 percent with limited or no English proficiency) and 96 percent of the world’s consumers and two-thirds of its purchasing power reside outside U.S. borders” (p. 6). What the results of this study tell us is that professionals with bilingual or multilingual skills are in high demand as companies look not only to reach their customers in their preferred languages but also to expand globally. However, it’s not sufficient to state on a résumé or application that you are bilingual or multilingual. More and more employers are validating the level of language competency and proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Why? Employers need a valid proof that job candidates truly possess the language skills they claim to have to make sure that whoever they hire will successfully perform the tasks required for the job.

In a recent episode of “Language is Your Superpower” podcast, host Lisa March chats with Vinay Patel, PhD, Senior I-O Psychologist working on the HR Research Team for AT&T. His role focuses on ensuring an objective, valid, and reliable process for employee selection, assessment development, and confirmation of job language competency. By using language assessments, employers are better equipped to test and track their employees’ language proficiencies to fill any gaps, better serve their customers, and grow their businesses. However, Dr. Patel warns against homegrown assessments and advises companies to rely on language testing experts that have decades of research, experience, and validated tools to ensure that they are measuring what they are intending to measure, which is language proficiency. Assessing language proficiency is both an art and a science that requires a certain level of flexibility as roles and responsibilities on the job evolve as well as the research and empirical evidence needed to validate the reliability of the assessments. As a potential language test-taker, you also want to have the comfort of knowing that the process is just, fair, and meets your proficiency needs.

AT&T relies on Language Testing International to perform language proficiency assessments with their bilingual and multilingual employees. We have conducted over 5 million language proficiency tests over the last 30 years across most industries and are a leading expert in this field. To learn more about how to get certified, visit LTI today!

Meet a Language Superhero: Eda Uzuncakara

magazine cover Eda UzuncakaraEda Uzuncakara shared her language learning journey with the hope to inspire people to “find their voice in a new language.” As a bilingual professional, IT manager, entrepreneur, and writer, Eda found her voice in English as her new language while she continues to keep her roots in her first language, Turkish. In her story, she talks about her language learning journey and shares great ideas for making language learning joyful and personal. She says that when you find what excites you about learning a language, you’ll minimize overthinking and the “foreign language will cease to be foreign to you.”

Read Eda’s story: Language-Superpower-Magazine-Eda-Uzuncakara

Watch Eda’s videos:

Video 1: Introducing the April Language Superhero

Video 2: Eda’s ideas for learning a new language

Video 3: Eda reading an excerpt from her book

Find out more about Eda’s collection of short stories, Jumping on the Drips here.

How Language Testing Serves Both the Employer and the Employees

customer service employee smiling talking to customer

Language Testing International (LTI) helps many of its corporate clients implement language assessments for their job candidates and employees. At first glance, one might assume that these third-party language assessments are only designed to help LTI’s clients, the employers, and not necessarily designed with the job candidates or employees’ benefit in mind. However, at LTI, we work very closely with our clients to ensure that all parties are carefully taken into consideration with each step of the assessment process.

As a case study example, on a recent episode of LTIs “Language Is Your Superpower” podcast, special guest, Vinay Patel, PhD, shared how language assessments can serve both the employer and its employees.

Vinay Patel, PhD, is the Senior Industrial-Organizational Psychologist for AT&T in Dallas, Texas. In his role as an I-O Psychologist—a position that studies human behavior in organizations and the workplace—he applies his and the organization’s collective knowledge and principles to create a better workplace where people are genuinely happy about their jobs and contribute to their organization in a meaningful way, while the organization does everything in their power to keep their employees fulfilled. He and his team at AT&T, when choosing a language testing partner, take into account that “in I-O Psychology, we measure different types of validity. And the one that’s often ridiculed by academics is face validity, because it’s basically looking at a test and saying ‘yeah, it looks like it’s measuring what it’s measuring’. But that’s really important from a candidate’s standpoint, right?” Vinay went on to give the example, “Let’s say you want to be a forklift operator and I’m asking you questions that have nothing to do with forklift operations. You’re not going to think the process is fair. I could have all the science behind that that says it predicts performance, but if candidates think they’re being cheated out of something, that’s not something your company wants to necessarily endorse or use.”

With LTI as AT&T’s language assessment partner, Vinay explained that “before implementing any kind of assessment, we want to collect data to ensure that assessment is valid and reliable, and job related. So, that was one of the first things that was done is to determine relevancy to the position. Also, at what level does the language need to be spoken to kind of meet the minimal qualifications? We want to make sure that the people that are coming in through the door can communicate with the customer in another language if they have to, and that they provide a good customer experience. So, the decision is made with the customer at heart. Really, those two things are absolutely necessary; making sure that the customer is happy with our service, but also making sure that we are doing everything in our steps to ensure that all of the things that the test is measuring are tied to the job.”

Vinay mentioned an additional benefit for job candidates, namely the official language proficiency credentials that come with each test and that each test-taker can showcase. “Whenever you pass the SAT’s or GRE or something like that, and you get a high score, you’re proud of it. It’s like this was a measure of aptitude and this is where I lie.” So, the job candidates, whether they land the job or not, obtain real-world certificate credentials, as well as a better understanding of how and where their language skills may be applicable in the workforce.

Vinay illustrates how, with the help of LTI, AT&T has been able to tailor their language assessments to specific roles in the company. Vinay gave specific examples of how “within the call center and retail spaces, we do ensure that the questions asked are really custom to the business. They are conversations that you would have in a call center space, or conversations or topics that would come up in a retail space. So, it’s not really just general ‘how well can you speak?’ or, you know, if you’re using slang terms or anything like that. It’s really specific and tied to the business.”

At LTI, we know that when our client’s customers are satisfied with the customer service they receive in different languages, and when our client’s job candidates and employees trust and have a positive experience with our language assessments, that our client’s customer satisfaction and their bottom-line usually tend to benefit as well.

Learn more about language proficiency assessment here.

The Washback Effect: Long-term Impacts of the AAPPL in the Classroom

female teacher helping a teenage girl in a classroom

By Chris Lemon, Northmont High School, Clayton, OH (Spanish Teacher, Department Chair)

Four years ago, our school chose the ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Language (AAPPL, Form B: Novice High to Advanced Low), over sixteen other options, as our preferred method for students to earn the Seal of Biliteracy accepted by our state. It was the clear choice as the best combination of design, accuracy, cost, and individualized feedback, and we have stayed with it in large part because of the “washback effect” that it has had on our classrooms.  The AAPPL is new to us; implementing it has been a change that impacts our program and classroom environment. So, the notion of washback effect is related to our firsthand experiences with the AAPPL in very specific ways.

Before we began to use the AAPPL, we had already begun to shift our instructional design–objectives, curriculum, resources, etc. toward a proficiency-based learning approach. From the first year, the test design itself and its detailed results for our students pushed us even further to build our learning experiences around real-world language use. ACTFL even supported us running our own workshop a couple years ago in which we invited teachers from around the region to learn more about the AAPPL and get a better sense of the format that our students would see.

These experiences taught us the importance of time management for our students, and now we focus more on building their ability in the lower levels to more quickly identify key vocabulary and details and to get the main idea in a variety of familiar settings in order to successfully transition to demonstrating these same skills in more challenging situations. We also prepare them for the increasing difficulty level of tasks within the testing environment itself, training them to leave themselves time for the later tasks that will require more thought, especially in the reading and writing sections. These time management skills not only prep them better for the test, but also push our classroom instruction to focus more time on those more advanced skills that lead to more interesting discussions during which students express themselves beyond simple statements and questions.

If you are looking for an assessment tool that will create a positive feedback loop to help you to reinvent your instruction, keep your students engaged, and push them to explore a variety of topics relevant to their own life and the culture that they are studying, I encourage you to explore what the AAPPL can do for you and your students. For us, the positive washback is significant.

Learn more about the AAPPL here: https://www.languagetesting.com/aappl

Learn more about the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines here: https://www.actfl.org/resources/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012/english