I spoke to an immigrant to Canada today, a lady from South America. She spoke excellent English. She managed to combine Canadian intonation with a noticeable but charming Spanish lilt. Her choice of words was definitely that of an educated person. She is trying to get her certificate as a pharmaceutical assistant in order to work in a hospital here. She has been told that the rules are that she needs to achieve a “level 8” in writing, according to that bureaucratic nightmare known as the Canadian Benchmark System. She has written several tests but has only reached level 7 because her use of prepositions, her spelling and her punctuation are not at “level 8”, while the rest of her English is . She was about to take an expensive “English writing course” and I persuaded her to work on her writing at LingQ, for much less money.
It would seem to me that since she has all the technical competence to do the job, and has even acquired the Canadian equivalent credits, as long as her employer thinks that she can do the job, why should some arbitrary level in spelling, prepositions and punctuation on the Canadian Benchmarks System stand in the way of her job. Kafkaesque!!
