Categories: Federal Skilled Workers

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)