Four tests in three hours to check your official level of Spanish
As of September 2016, students of Spanish will be able to sit a single proficiency exam that aims to represent the many variants of the language, which is spoken around the world by more than half-a-billion people.
Modeled on the TOEFL and IELTS English exams, the International Spanish Language Evaluation Service (SIELE) is the brainchild of the Instituto Cervantes, the government-funded agency responsible for promoting Spanish around the world, and has been developed in conjunction with the University of Salamanca, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, along with Telefónica, which is responsible for the technological platform.
SIELE is aimed at the 21 million students of Spanish around the world, as well as native speakers
The SIELE test will be taken online at accredited centers and will assess students’ knowledge of Spanish. They will then receive a certificate that will be valid for two years.
As opposed to the English exams it is patterned after, the SIELE will take into account different linguistic varieties of Spanish. For example, where the TOEFL tests only in American English, and Cambridge Exams test in British English, the SIELE will incorporate within a single exam the many different geographical variations of Spanish, a language that differs greatly from nation to nation.
SIELE is aimed at the 21 million students of Spanish around the world, as well as native speakers. Rather than passing or failing, students are simply given a score, up to a maximum of 1,000 points, which places them on one of six levels equivalent to EU-established guidelines. Assessments will be made based on reading, listening, writing and speaking.
“It is the fastest accreditation system and the most universal,” said Instituto Cervantes director Víctor García de la Concha at a signing ceremony in Madrid on Thursday.
Some 300,000 people are expected to sit the exam in the first phase, and within five years, that number is likely to rise to 750,000
The Instituto de Cervantes has 92 schools in 44 countries, although its presence in Asia is limited to a single center in China, according to García de la Concha.
