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Spoken Language English

Overview The Spoken Language English test measures the ability of non-native English speakers to respond

orally in a coherent, comprehensible, acceptable, and timely manner to a variety of questions,

instructions, and situations. The test produces an overall score, as well as the following four subscales:

Sentence Mastery, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Pronunciation.

The test is administered through a computer prompt, where the candidate is provided detailed

instructions. Instruction sheets may be provided in either English or Spanish. He/she is then directed to

complete the assessment via the telephone. The system presents the candidate with a series of spoken

prompts in English at a conversational pace and elicits oral responses in English. Sound files are

automatically created, assessed for accuracy, and stored. Upon completion, the test is scored

immediately, with speech samples from the testing event available in the final report.

Job Level: All

Job Family/Title: All

Localizations Available: English

Details Average Testing Time (minutes): 17 minutes

Time Allowed (minutes): Not Applicable

Maximum Number of Questions: 63

Designed for Unproctored Environment: Yes

Question Format: Part A: Reading

Part B: Repeats

Part C: Short Answer

Part D: Sentence Builds

Part E: Story Retell

Part F: Open Questions

Product Category: Spoken Language

Knowledge,

Skills, Abilities,

and

Competencies

Measured

The Spoken Language English test measures the candidate’s ability to understand spoken English and

speak it intelligibly at a native-like conversational pace on everyday topics.

The test consists of an overall score and four subscale scores:

Sentence Mastery: This reflects the ability to understand, recall, and produce English phrases and

clauses in complete sentences. Performance is based on accurate syntactic processing and appropriate

usage of words, phrases, and clauses in meaningful sentence structures.

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Vocabulary: This reflects the ability to understand common everyday words spoken in sentence context

and produce such words as needed. High performers possess familiarity with the form and meaning of

everyday words and their use in connected speech.

Fluency: This reflects the rhythm, phrasing, and timing evident in constructing, reading, and repeating

sentences. High performers possess speech that is smooth, with few, if any, hesitations, omissions, or

repetitions.

Pronunciation: This reflects the ability to produce consonants, vowels, and stress in a native-like

manner in sentence context. Performance is based on knowledge of the phonological structure of

everyday words.

Sample

Questions

Spoken Language English Question Prompt:

Reading:

Please read the sentences as you are instructed. (The candidate has 8 to 12 sentences written in

English presented to him/her on his/her test paper).

For example: a voice says, “Please read sentence four.”

The candidate will read sentence four out loud.

A voice then says, “Please read sentence two.”

The candidate will then read sentence two out loud.

Repeats:

Please repeat each sentence that you hear.

For example: a voice says, “Leave town on the next train.”

The candidate says, “Leave town on the next train.”

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Short Answer Questions:

Please give a simple answer to the questions.

For Example: a voice says, “Would you get water from a bottle or a newspaper?”

The candidate says, “A bottle” or “From a bottle”.

Sentence Builds:

Please rearrange the word groups into a sentence.

For example: a voice says, “was reading”...”my mother”…”her favorite magazine”

The candidate says, “My mother was reading her favorite magazine.”

Story Retells:

The candidate will hear three short stories in English. After each story, the candidate will have 30

seconds to retell it in English. The candidate is instructed to retell as much of the story as possible in

English, including the situation, characters, actions and, ending.

Open Questions:

The candidate will have 40 seconds to answer each of two questions. The questions will be about family

life or personal choices. Each question will be spoken twice, followed by a beep. At the end of 40

seconds, another beep will signal the end of the time the candidate has to answer the question.

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Sample Reports