Reply to Can you legally gauge for language proficiency at a job fair?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Usually people just ask a question (same question) in a foreign language to all candidates. Something like, "tell us about your experience speaking Finnish" or whatever.

you can also screen CVs by language proficiency testing scores (ACTFL OPI in the US, then different languages have their own exams like DALF/DELF for French, DELE for Spain-Spanish, CELU for Argentinian-Spanish, etc).[/quote]

Thx!

The issue there is that we primarily need Spanish speakers who are typically either native speakers or people who majored in Spanish and did study abroad. Nobody is doing formal testing at the level you suggested. A basic conversational screening question like you suggested has been the approach, but it has been called into question. [/quote]

DP.  Who called it into question?  It seems like a perfectly sane and easy way to gauge fluency for adult job applicants.  It is one of the ways that we test children for their language fluency in schools.  We ask each child the same question in the language being tested and wait for the child to respond in that language.  Their ability to respond, using appropriate words and sentence structure, and being grammatically correct, gives evidence to their level of fluency.

It is just the same as the informal evaluation that you do when you're talking to the person in English.  Their ability to respond in a cogent and cohesive way informs your opinion of the person.

I'm just guessing but it sounds like the person asking the question didn't really think they would have to prove their ability to speak Spanish.  LOL, the joke's on them.[/quote]

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