"SO you speak good English? Excellent, show your certificate please." Yes, standardisation and certification of English have come to town. As the world reaches a stage where degrees and claims of a knowledge of good English are not enough, an internationally-recognised certification to prove your range becomes more significant. Trinity College London, an internationally-recognised centre for standardisation, is ready to conduct training and assessment at Angloscape, an Indo-British language training centre in the city.
Angloscape would host the Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE). The signing ceremony in this regard was held here on Thursday. K. Jayakumar, Additional Chief Secretary, was the chief guest. K. Padmakumar, IG of Police and N. Radhakrishnan Nair, CEO, Technopark, also spoke.
Trinity College would conduct the certification exams through their national managers, Orient BlackSwan.
Thomas Jones, Head of International Marketing, said that Trinity College offers the opportunity for learners to be benchmarked and obtain an internationally-accepted certificate. Besides being the global language of communication, the internet and international business, good English assumes greater significance as more and more jobs now require better levels of spoken English.
Trinity, which is better known from 1877 for its record in the assessment of music, is in the business of English certification for the past 70 years.
There are three options for one to be assessed and certified - graded exam, Integrated Skills in English (ISE) and spoken English for work. The first, as the name suggests, is a certification process from Grade 1 to the advanced stage [grades 10 to 12].
The Grade 1 assessment, which lasts just five minutes, tests the basic communicative skills like exchanging greetings, simple grammar, and lexis - how the candidate understands and uses vocabulary related to personal information, immediate surroundings, animals and colours. The correct pronunciation of individual sounds to form intelligible words is also assessed.
The Grade 12 exam lasts 25 minutes and consists of five phases - presentation of a complex topic with a high degree of formality to the examiner, discussion, interaction, listening and conversation.
Joe Tun Sein, Examinations Consultant with Orient BlackSwan, suggested that integrated skills in English, which assesses all four skills - namely listening, speaking, reading and writing - are ideal for English teachers. It would take only two days to complete the basic training and then on, the teachers can go back to classes and work with the students.
He said that if spoken English training is done effectively in primary schools, it can reap rich dividends, especially in the backdrop of high dropout rates. It gives the dropouts a chance to gain an entry-level job with his/her communication skills. Secondly, the ability to comprehend would check the tendency to drop out from school.
``Knowing a language is not enough, using it is more important,’’ said Joe.
Thomas agreed. ``I have friends from Oxford who can analyse 15th century French romantic poetry, but can’t order a cup of coffee or have a conversation in that language,’’ he guffawed, adding that he picked up his spoken French while working in a French restaurant.