The Evidence of Language Proficiency – The Criteria for Designation as a Language Testing Agency
The Director of Economic Immigration Policy and Programs Division, the Minister’s delegate, is responsible for designating language testing agencies. Typically, the authorities will only designate testing agencies if they comply with the following criteria:
- Expertise
- Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) deems a test as appropriate if the test evaluates proficiency in all the four skill areas i.e. reading, writing, oral comprehension (or listening) and speaking, in functional English or French at all levels from basic to high proficiency
- Reliability
- A test would need to produce consistently similar scores among candidates who possess similar language proficiencies.
- Therefore, different versions of the test would need to be at the same level of difficulty each time the applicants write the test
- Integrity (or Security)
- Designated testing agencies would need to meet security standards in terms of the logistics of:
- Preparing test sites
- Registering candidates
- Test writing and marking and,
- Sending out the results
- Therefore, the testing agency would need to have ample anti-fraud mechanisms in place for obtaining the approval of the authorities
- Availability
- For Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) purposes, a designated testing agency would need to be able to make the tests available to applicants in all parts of Canada where there is a sufficient demand for third-party language testing
Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)
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