Press releases

(25. 06. 2009) HR Conference about City & Guilds Examinations

During the morning seminar participants to the conference had an opportunity to familiarize themselves in an interactive form with internationally acknowledged City & Guilds examinations, and possibilities of their practical use within the company language training. Channel Crossing is an accredited City & Guilds examination centre.

The whole conference was organized as an interactive workshop. During various exercises and discussions personnel managers could try themselves individual parts of City & Guilds Spoken ESOL examination on different language levels, and at the end of the seminar they were provided an opportunity to take an oral exam.

The group discussion focused mainly on two subjects - why and how to measure language knowledge of employees and job applicants. The debate was open and fruitful and its principal topics were motivation of employees, various company concepts of language training and related practical issues, as well as objections regarding the relevance of language certificates for job description of individual employees.

From the viewpoint of human resources management the City & Guilds examinations appear to be in many respects an effective instrument. They are consistently based on the Joint European Reference Framework for Languages and its grading system describing individual levels of language competencies. The other indisputable advantages of these examinations are their time flexibility, favourable price and clear orientation on practical and realistic language use.