An Intro to Language Testing
A Practical Language Testing Definition
Simply put, language testing is the measurement of a person’s ability to use language in some way. Of course, that doesn’t clarify much, because language is an incredibly complex phenomenon involving a number of distinct skills that interact with each other in any number of ways. For that reason, to provide a language testing definition in the context of your organization, we need to talk about which skills you’re wanting to measure and why.
Since Parrot focuses on language testing for the workplace, our testing program is designed to measure the skills you use to communicate in the workplace. Specifically, we measure a candidate’s ability to speak a language in the types of situations they face on the job. In contrast, other language tests measure reading, writing, listening, or some combination of these or other skills.
Ultimately, language testing means identifying people with the language skills that will help your organization achieve its mission. To that end, partnering with Parrot will give you access to the world’s best workplace language test. We’ve combined an innovative methodology with modern technology to create a new standard for simplicity, accuracy, and efficiency.
How does Parrot do language testing?
Language skills are measured by having a trained rater observe a candidate speaking. It’s both impractical and expensive to do that in person. That’s why we’ve built a secure virtual proctoring system that allows your candidates to take a language test online at any time, on-demand, from any location. Our security measures ensure the candidate in question is the one speaking and our raters analyze their responses and send you results in less than 24 hours.
Parrot is the only language testing program that offers secure, remote testing on any internet-enabled device. Not everyone has easy access to a computer, microphone, and webcam at any give time. Telling a candidate to borrow a computer or go to the library just isn’t practical. By offering the Parrot language test on smartphones, you can make your hiring process faster, easier, and more fair.
Parrot prompts aren’t designed to measure language skills in a broad, abstract sense. We want to help you decide who to hire, so all of our prompts place speakers in situations that demonstrate their ability to use language to perform on the job. When necessary, we can even provide clients with custom prompts that are catered specifically to their industry or the duties of the position in question.
Additional Resources
If you’d like to learn more about language assessment as a general concept, Wikipedia has a great article on the subject that goes into far greater detail than we can here. To learn more about Parrot’s approach to language testing for organizations, we offer the resources below.
Parrot for Business Info Sheet
Parrot is built to help businesses hire candidates with the language skills those businesses need to grow. Read this info sheet to learn more about how easy your testing program could be.
Test Quality & Validity
By combining an innovative methodology with modern tech, we’re creating a new standard evaluating language skills. Of course, none of that would matter if our results weren’t also unquestionably valid. This report shows how we’ve fine-tuned our method to meet and exceed key industry standards for validity.
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