DELE (B1-B2) Examiners Certificated Course <

DELE (B1-B2) Examiners Certificated Course

A teacher from our Spanish school at Instituto Hemingway finished a few days ago the DELE (B1 – B2) examiners Preperation Course taught by the Cervantes Institute.

He shares his experiences with us in the following article:

On the 14 and 15th December 2012, the Cervantes Institute celebrated at its headquarters in Madrid, the Teacher Training Course, which is a course taught through The DELE Exam preparation. (LEVEL B) This was organised by the Spanish Federation of Associations of Schools of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FEDELE) and by the Cervantes Institute. The course was presented by Inmaculada Molina Mediavilla and Javier Fruns Giménez, who are both academics in the Department of Linguistic Certification in this academic area, at the Cervantes Institute.

This course was a response to the demand for specific training in the administration of the official exams towards obtaining the DELE, for those ELE teachers who wish to obtain a certificate that allows them to offer their services to more than 600 examination centers, recongised worldwide.

The course introduced the procedural rules of administration of the various tests that form part of the exams and puts a special emphasis on description and application of the elegibility criteria for the oral tests.

The main objectives of the course were to manage the written and oral tests for the DELE exams according to the procedural rules and to mark the DELE oral tests by applying the established criteria.

Between the contents of the material, they had to familiarise themselves with the MCER levels (its nature and destinations, contents and dimensions, scales, the marking evaluation, the instruments and context of the use of the language), examination especifications: The DELE construct, the administration of the written tests, the expression and oral interaction and the marking of the tests and oral interaction.

With regards to the Methadology that is delivered in modules on the procedural aspects of the DELE, the administrative norms were removed from the tests and the derived implications of not observing them were then explained. The rest of the module contents in the presentation were combined with practical group tasks, amongst those that are found in workshops with the MCER descriptors: MCER levels, illustration workshops with oral presentations, etc. This practical methadology is expected to standardise the judgements and to correctly apply the qualification scales in the expression tests and oral interactions.

During the course presentation, the assistants approved the adequate understanding of the concepts, routeins, norms and procedures that are employed in the administration of the different tests. In the practical section , through the visualisation of the videos and tests, the students had to make reasonably valued judgements according to the qualification scales of the distinct levels.

RECOMMENDED BIBILOGRAPHY

- Curriculum plan for the Cervantes Institute. Reference levels for Spanish (2006), Madrid, New Library.

- The Europass Language Portfolio