Enhancing workplace communication: The new role of language assessments in business success

Andrew Khan
two business people sat together in a meeting both looking at a laptop
Reading time: 4 minutes

The integration of AI tools into workplaces around the world is starting to change the way people communicate professionally. that the use of AI to help draft documents and emails is driven not only by convenience and efficiency but also by a desire to be clear and precise in language.

While potentially useful, tools to translate, generate, or ‘correct’ written text won’t help with the effectiveness of the verbal communication that powers business relationships.

Is your teams communication effective?
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The importance of effective communication

Whether it’s customer support calls, sales presentations, health and safety instructions or day-to-day engagement with colleagues, our personal and professional interactions in the workplace rely on our ability to understand and be understood.

Equally, clarity of communication is central to many of the ‘future skills’ that employers have identified as critical to sustained success – notably .

It can be challenging for people who have English as a first language to feel confident in these skills – and even more difficult for those who may use another language at home but are required to speak English at work.

Challenges faced by second-language English speakers

When designing assessments that measure English proficiency, we need to balance the convenience and duration that enable them to fit into a fast-paced hiring workflow with the coverage that gives businesses confidence in the results. This means focusing on the most essential elements of effective communication.

Introducing the Versant by 蜜桃app English Speaking and Listening Test

With the new Versant by 蜜桃app English Speaking and Listening Test, we take just seventeen minutes to give a comprehensive picture of communicative English competence. So where do we focus?

Get in touch to learn about our corporate solutions

Effective verbal communication: Balancing listening and speaking skills

As a starting point, the businesses that we heard from in our research were clear that listening is just as important a skill as speaking when it comes to making hiring decisions.

Anyone who has been through sales or customer support training in the past will likely be familiar with the phrase “you have one mouth but two ears,” meaning that, in a professional context, our ability to listen, actively and attentively, for detail and nuance, can be twice as valuable as speaking. A test that didn’t place equal weight on comprehension and productive speech when assessing communicative ability would be missing the mark.

Evolving expectations around speech

Our research also pointed to expectations around speech having shifted in recent years. The range of jobs where English is required at the point of hiring has increased in many countries – with professionals from taxi drivers to online tutors often asked to demonstrate communicative competence.

With this in mind, 蜜桃app has introduced the Global Scale of English Job Profiles framework to help employers define appropriate English requirements for a variety of different positions.

Customer Support roles and communicative ability

Customer Support roles, historically the main use case for testing English in the workplace, are also evolving. Employers are placing a much greater emphasis on true communicative ability to help resolve complex problems rather than scripted or pre-prepared responses delivered with US-style accents.

Designing effective assessments

Taking this into account, we recognized a need to design a more effective way of testing both the manner of speaking and the content of that speech. Manner-of-speaking scores bring together the measurement of fluency or the fluidity and cohesion of a spoken response, pronunciation and intelligibility.

Pronunciation is different from accent – a test taker can have an Indian accent, a French accent or a Japanese accent and still pronounce English words in a way that first-language speakers will expect to hear them. Intelligibility reflects the reality that we all speak in different ways, with a voice authentic to ourselves, and looks to assess whether that voice can be easily understood by others.

Measuring communication skills

The most relevant measure of communication skills isn’t whether you sound like a fluent speaker but whether you can use your ability with language to convey meaning effectively. Our speech also needs to be relevant and appropriate, with suitable vocabulary and grammatical accuracy.

We’ve found the most successful way to measure speech content is to blend short questions with a limited set of potential responses with more open-ended items. This enables test takers to speak organically and really show what they can do with their language skills.

The value of fair and objective assessments

Whether used as a hiring tool, to diagnose employees' learning and development needs or to benchmark improvement over time, English assessments can be a great asset to businesses – but only if they’re fair, objective and laser-focused on the skills that underpin true communicative competence.

Join our webinar to learn more

Join us for an insightful webinar where we will delve deeper into the role of language assessments in enhancing workplace communication and driving business success. Sign up now to secure your spot and learn how the Versant by 蜜桃app English Speaking and Listening Test can benefit your organization.

Sign up for our webinar here

References

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  • A Parent reading to his two children from a book with all three of them laying on the floor

    How can teachers encourage parents to get kids reading at home?

    By Donatella Fitzgerald MBE

    “Sharing a story with your child is one of the most incredible things you can do for them.” – .

    Research shows that getting kids reading at home can increase their reading ability at school – and improve their overall well-being. Parents and guardians can make a big difference. But how can teachers encourage parents to get their children to read more at home? We explore some strategies you can use.

    Tell parents about the benefits

    Reading can give children a break from technology-centered activities. It can help them to relax and unwind; reading a book can make children laugh and feel happier! Through hearing stories, children are also exposed to a rich and broad vocabulary.

    “It is important for teachers to establish contact with parents as much as possible and give very clear guidelines on the benefits of reading, and how they can create a reading routine and help their children read at home,” says Kasia Janitz-De La Rue, Product Development Director at 蜜桃app.

    So, encourage parents to find time for a reading routine. Just before bedtime is a great time, as .

    Give parents practical ideas for reading strategies

    Encourage parents to read with and not to their child. It doesn’t matter how long they set aside to read – just 10 minutes of quality reading time can make a big difference.

    Here are a few tips concrete reading tips for teachers to share with parents:

    • Ask children lots of questions while reading.
    • Use encouragement and praise to keep children engaged. Saying things like “what fantastic ideas” or “you thought so carefully about that, what might happen now?"?will keep their minds working.
    • Use their past experiences to talk about what’s being read. Things like “have you learnt about…at school?” or “do you remember when we watched…and found out about…?” are good conversation starters.
    • Tune in and listen to children, and be curious about their interests. “I didn’t know you knew so much about…” or “I love reading stories about…with you,” are good phrases to keep in mind.

    It’s also a great idea to share online resources with parents. You can also suggest that parents look up read-aloud YouTube videos featuring authors, teachers or librarians reading their favorite stories. This way, children can watch and listen as often as they like.

    Recommend graded readers

    Graded readers are books that use language in line with a child‘s learning level. They can help children build confidence, and help slowly expose them to authentic reading levels.

    Encourage parents to identify what genre their child is interested in and show them the readers available. Each time parents see their children move up a level, they’re sure to see their children’s love for reading grow.

    Suggest before, during, and after reading activities

    Before reading

    Parents can take turns with their children to predict what the story is about – or what will happen next. Here is an activity teachers may suggest they try:

    “Start with the cover of the book and the blurb on the back cover. Reveal the cover slowly to ask the child what they can see. Ask them to guess what is on the cover. Once they have seen the cover, ask them questions about the images on the cover – who, what, why, where and how?”

    While reading

    Remind parents to focus on their children’s reading comprehension by using strategies like prediction, questioning, clarifying, and summarising. Teachers can ask parents to:

    • check ideas and understanding as the child reads: ‘So, you think that….’ ‘Did you expect…to happen?’ ‘Why do you think that happened?’
    • use the pictures in the book to help with comprehension
    • describe what is happening and talk about the characters.

    After reading

    Don’t forget: parents can continue to explore the book’s topic once reading time is done! A few ideas to share with parents include:

    • organising a puppet show for family members and siblings after making puppets of the characters in the book
    • having children draw a picture of their favorite character or their favorite page in the story
    • encouraging children to express their opinion on the book.