We have ways of making you listen!
It is quite normal now to have diagnosis in hospital, by machine, the same as we have come to accept for cars and aircraft, but how about English Language Proficiency testing?
In aviation, the international language is English, and in 1997 the International Civil Aviation Organization recognised the need to establish a level of English Proficiency as it had been established that there had been numerous accidents and incidents as a result of a poor level of understanding between Pilots and Air Traffic controllers.
As of March 2008, a system of testing was introduced covering Comprehension, Pronunciation, Fluency, Structure, Vocabulary, and Interaction, with a rating of 1-6 where Level 4 is considered Operational. If of Level 5 you gain an extended period of 6 years between testing; and at Level 6 you are considered an expert, and the validity period is indefinite.
The method of testing is by an on-line computer voice activated exercise. You have a headset, and computer screen, and a keyboard, and a series of activities lasting around 30 minutes, and at the end you are marked by the machine and given your result.
The program is of American origin, my invigilator was from the Philippines, and the person in charge of the testing was German.
There were many parts to the exercise including the:
- Reading of aviation-style messages
- Reading common English
- Repeating a number of sentences as remembered
- Short Answer questions
- Read back response
- Corrections and Confirmations of communication exchanges between two speakers
- and Story re-telling.
I got off to a bad start because as I was about to answer Question1, the voice immediately said “Question 2”!
I have an intense dislike for things like this. I am English, had a reasonable education, and have been flying for nearly 40 years, and have been using Radio Telephony, in a large number of countries around the world. I believe I can understand, and make myself understood, and follow the English R/T framework when using the radio.
For the purpose of my licence I passed the test, but was cross that I was marked as not expert, by a machine!
I had the right to ask for a repeat test, and following my comment to the invigilator about the lack of time to make a reply when the program was started, I may be invited back for an aural with a human, just to make sure.
There was no gain from this test as there was no feed back, tips or pointers, but at least I can renew my licence, and carry on flying.
There is nothing you can say because the machine is right.
Oh, and that will be $250 please!
By Bob Derham
Learning from Dogs 
Recently we had friends from France staying with us and they had bought with them a electronic talking translator that we believe is used by the USA military to educate and assist troops overseas with pronunciation of foreign languages. Of course the machine spoke and understood American English so when we tried our English pronunciation skills on it we failed every time. Although we may have Australian overtones to our pronunciation to confuse it even more we have been speaking the Queen’s English for over 65 years and cannot believe our accent is that bad. Good luck with anyone trying to convince these machines they know better.
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