Certification and accreditation for Foreign Language Learners

With the purpose to strengthen and broaden the Proyecto de Acreditación de Inglés (PAI), the Comisión de Políticas Lingüisticas, organized two accreditation courses for teachers of Foreign Languages in Montevideo.
The first course was run in Spanish in the month of December 2009, by Cristina Banfi and Silvia Rettarolli, directors of the certification programme in Buenos Aires and gathered teachers of English, French, Italian and Portuguese. At the end of the two day intensive course, participants were asked to explore a testing tool in the light of what had been learnt. Those who complied with the assignment successfully were invited to attend a second course held at CODICEN between the 22nd and 25th of February 2010.
This second learning instance was run in English, tutored by a British Council expert, Dr. Susan Sheehan. In this course, teachers of English were able learn and discuss about testing theory, test specifications, and how to operationalise these. In order to assess the relevance of this course participants have to write a paper in which they show individually how the concepts learnt may become meaningful to our context.
Italian, French and Portuguese have not been forgotten. A course taught by a specialist who works in Romance Languages evaluation and certification will be held shortly in Montevideo to cater for the certification needs of our students interested in these foreign languages.
For the Comisión de Políticas Lingüisticas certification and accreditation simply honour our students’ right to have the chance to have their learning certified by the public system.