ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements — Rated Speech Samples

Language Proficiency Rating

General Remarks

The test taker is a confident, animated speaker who understands easily, knows how to pick up clues and manages his interactions with the interlocutors well. His pronunciation and sentence structure, and the resulting lapses in fluency, do however diminish somewhat the overall effectiveness of his natural communicational ability. This explains why he was rated as an ICAO Level 4.

Pronunciation

There are some good examples of stress being used for clarification:

• in size, in uh, in range (02:32 - 02:35)

or for emphasis:

• amazing aircraft (01:47 - 01:49)

and when acknowledging what the interlocutor has said:

• one year and a half (02:46 - 02:47)

However, pronunciation, stress and rhythm are influenced by the first language and sometimes interfere with ease of understanding. Moreover there are cases where words are indistinct:

• I've been flying befued this aircraft (00:18 - 00:21)
• tax-out (06:19 - 06:20)
• as soonahava (06:47 - 06:48)

Structure

Basic grammatical structures and sentence patterns are usually well controlled and there are examples of more complex structures and idioms:

• four or five times in the past twenty five years (03:46 - 03:52)
• if there, uh there's no doctor (04:39 - 04:43)

However, errors do occur, though they rarely interfere with meaning:

• I've been flew MD11 for 13 years (01:37 - 01:41)
• take cares about the patients (04:13 - 04:15)
• In order to, to do the procedure you need to uh go back to our gate (06:31 - 06:40)
• as soonahava how long does it take (06:47 - 06:53)

Vocabulary

The test taker demonstrates a sufficient range of technical vocabulary:

• manoeuvrable (00:34 - 00:36)
• feature (00:51 - 00:52)
• shuttle (01:25 - 01:27)
• handle (04:46 - 04:47)

However, errors do occur:

• it's a quite confidence aircraft (it inspires confidence) (02:58 - 03:02)
• First the chief purser ask for for a medical (medic) onboard (03:57 - 04:02)
• our maintenance personnel take care about (of) (06:43 - 06:46)

The test taker can also paraphrase when lacking vocabulary:

• we call um, uh by the the radios, uh uh system, a medical system, we call it medilife, medilife, it’s uh (04:48 - 05:03)

Fluency

The test taker produces stretches of language at an appropriate tempo. However, there is occasional loss of fluency when he fails to link short pieces of information together:

• when talking about his love of flying the 777 (00:26 - 01:04)
• when making an announcement to the passengers (06:08 - 07:03)

Comprehension

Comprehension is consistently accurate in nearly all contexts, including a limited range of speech varieties.

Interactions

The test taker's responses are immediate, appropriate and informative:

• when talking about the different models of plane (01:57 - 02:40)
• when explaining what happens if someone on board is taken ill (03:56 - 05:35)

and he manages the speaker/listener relationship effectively.

Influence of the test format

The test contains a wide variety of suitable work-related topics. The presence of a flight crew member as an interlocutor gives added validity to the test although it would have been preferable for the captain to have taken a more active role and to have spoken at a more natural pace. The main interlocutor is able to elicit the test taker's strengths and weaknesses.