Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ICAO
Language
Proficiency
Level
(Lowest rating
among individual
ratings)
5 5 5 5 5 5 5
General Remarks
The test taker is very much at ease in English. His performance is clearly at least at ICAO Level 5. A more comprehensive
test format might well have justified his being given a Level 6 in Fluency and Interactions.
Pronunciation
Pronunciation is certainly coloured by the test taker's native language but almost never interferes with ease of
understanding.
Occasional failure to mark the past form may be more attributed to pronunciation than to a failing of grammatical
awareness:
Otherwise, pronunciation is generally clear and stress patterns are used very naturally to attract attention or emphasize:
Structure
Basic grammatical structures are consistently well controlled and even complex structures are only rarely incorrect:
as you know, in the cockpit is a two man crew, so it's a CRM going on between first officer and captain at all
times, so there is always positive exchange, exchange of commands, assisting each other (00:22 - 00:39)
after the open sky policy that it was in effect by the new government (01:56 - 02:03)
probably like 15 minutes after after take-off (05:37 - 05:40)
The test taker often spontaneously paraphrases idiomatically:
So the captain said, "Ok, go back and try to assess the situation, you know how bad is it? What happened?"
(05:56 - 06:03)
Vocabulary
The test taker is rarely at a loss for vocabulary and demonstrates a considerable amount of appropriate specialised and
idiomatic vocabulary:
Fluency
The test taker is able to speak at length with a natural effortless flow which he varies for stylistic effect. He possesses a
large stock of idiomatic discourse markers that are used appropriately and with the required stress (see Pronunciation) to
facilitate ease of comprehension:
In addition, the test taker shows evidence of variation in speech flow for stylistic effect. This variation is especially evident
in his recreation of the cockpit dialogue in segments 05:36 to 06:05 and 08:45 to 09:05, where he changes voice quality
and speech flow to take on the roles of the pilot and the flight attendant.
Comprehension
The test taker's comprehension is consistently accurate on both common work-related and more complex unexpected
topics. Although the format of the interview did not allow his understanding of a variety of accents to be assessed, he was
totally at ease with idiomatic American English. Without this caveat, he would probably have been awarded a Level 6 for
Comprehension.
Interactions
The test taker's responses are always immediate, appropriate and informative. He manages the speaker/listener
relationship with considerable ease picking up on and expanding on each of the interlocutor’s questions. He knows how to
introduce each new topic in an engaging way:
The test taker also evidences native-like use of markers to confirm and check listener understanding:
This example, recorded on the telephone, highlights the difficulties in getting an appropriate sample of test taker
performance across all ICAO Language Proficiency Levels without a structured set of interview prompts and a certain
familiarity with the subject of aviation. In this instance, the test taker was very proficient and might have merited a rating
of Level 6 in some skills had the test format included various accents, unpredictable situations, and a range of unfamiliar
topics.