Professional Language Assessment Services – an effective way to measure bilingual abilities

Does your organization need to determine whether bilingual employees or prospective candidates have the language skills required for their professional responsibilities? REACH provides professional language assessment services to help organizations evaluate oral proficiency in Spanish and more than 30 other languages.

Being conversationally bilingual does not necessarily mean having the language proficiency needed for effective workplace communication. An individual may communicate comfortably with family and friends but have difficulty using specialized vocabulary, expressing complex ideas, or understanding professional conversations. Evaluating these abilities can help organizations make informed decisions about staff qualifications and language-related responsibilities.

Why Is Language Assessment Important?

Language assessment is an essential tool for organizations that need to evaluate the bilingual proficiency of employees and prospective candidates. REACH provides comprehensive language assessments to help healthcare organizations, Language Service Providers (LSPs), and academic institutions determine whether individuals have the oral language proficiency needed to communicate effectively with limited-English-proficient populations.

Bilingualism takes different forms and develops through a variety of personal, educational, and social experiences. An individual’s proficiency in a second language can depend on when and how the language was acquired, the environment in which it was learned, and the opportunities to use it over time.

For example, some individuals develop bilingual abilities during early childhood, while others acquire a second language later in life. Heritage language speakers may have grown up hearing and speaking a language at home but may not have developed the same level of proficiency in vocabulary, grammar, or formal communication.

These differences are important because conversational fluency alone does not establish whether someone has the language skills required for a particular professional role.

What Does Our Language Assessment Evaluate?

REACH uses an in-house assessment tool designed to evaluate an individual’s oral language proficiency. The assessment examines five key areas:

• Fluency: Ability to communicate smoothly, clearly, and effectively.
• Grammar: Ability to use appropriate grammatical structures.
• Pronunciation: Clarity and accuracy of spoken language.
• Vocabulary: Range and appropriate use of words, including language-specific terminology.
• Listening comprehension: Ability to understand spoken language and accurately interpret information.

Results are evaluated with reference to the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Proficiency Scale, which provides a framework for describing language proficiency.

Who Benefits from a Language Assessment?

REACH works with organizations that need to evaluate the bilingual abilities of employees and prospective candidates, including:

• Healthcare Organizations seeking to assess bilingual staff who communicate with patients with limited English proficiency.
• Language Service Providers evaluating candidates for language-related positions and assignments.
• Academic institutions seeking to understand and measure students’ or employees’ oral language abilities.

The results can help organizations better understand an individual’s language strengths and identify areas that may require further development.

How the REACH Assessment Process Works

Our assessments are conducted by highly experienced linguists who have received specific training in evaluating oral language proficiency in their respective languages.

REACH has developed its assessment tool to provide organizations with a structured way to evaluate bilingual communication abilities. The findings offer useful information about an individual’s strengths and areas for improvement, supporting informed staffing, placement, and professional development decisions.

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We are proud to offer language assessments in the following languages:

English – Mandarin – Chinese – Cantonese Chinese – Burmese – Hmong- Nepali – Cambodian – Armenian – Punjabi – Hindi – Urdu – Tagalog – Korean – Arabic – Somali – Russian – Haitian Creole – French – Italian – Portuguese – Polish – Croatian – Serbian – Spanish – Mixteco Alto – Mixteco Bajo – Mam – Tamil – Vietnamese – Indonesian