English Classes and Canadian Language Benchmarks by Debra Schweyer

[Music] [Music] [Applause] tonight we're gonna talk about the importance of communication skills you probably know a lot about this already but we're going to just kind of confirm what we know about how important it is to communicate well at work at home in the neighborhood etc I'll explain to you what Canadian language benchmarks are what they do and why we use them we'll talk about well arc which is the Winnipeg English language assessment and referral centre hopefully dispel any myths that you've heard about that we'll talk about the tests that we use to describe your English language skills and then we'll look at English language classes and other kinds of opportunities that are available to you communication skills so what are communication skills first of all presenting your ideas you have to be able to speak in a way that other people will understand if you want to persuade someone about your opinions give them information tell a story all kinds of things being able to do that well means that people will really hear you listening to other people could be a lecture at a university it could be a news broadcaster it could be the movies or television it could be somebody you're talking to at the bus stop right about the weather or whatever being able to read texts read safety information read well information about your job about your pay about contracts those sorts of things an audience awareness is a really important piece so communication skills apply to weather in different ways when you're talking to a child for example then they do when you're talking to your boss right you would speak differently to the cashier at the grocery store probably than you would to the Prime Minister of Canada alright so audience awareness is a critical part of communication skill English classes in Canada are designed to help you to improve those communication skills kind of all the way around I think you'd already know the answer to this communication skills are important in in the community so you want to talk to your neighbors you want to talk to you might need to talk to emergency people right health care practitioners fire fighters whatever people you might have to find out about whether you're gonna get a ticket for parking your car in front of your house and running your fault your cord across to the driveway you heard about that in the news never mind independence for you I expect this is not as big a piece but for some families where mom or dad don't speak English well and the children speak English because they learn really quickly at school they may have to take their children with them to go to a doctor to go to the grocery store to be independent it's important to be able to communicate yourself your employment and education may depend on you being able to communicate well if you're a professional an engineer an accountant a teacher a doctor you need to be able to communicate in order to do your job in case some cases when you have if saying about two people in a job and there's a promotion coming if all other things are equal so there's the same level of skill and experience you've been in the job the same amount of time the person with better communication skills may be the one who gets promoted rather than the other and for education certainly communication skills are vital to be able to do do continued education especially in a post-secondary institution you need to be able to understand what's happening in order to succeed in the courses you're taking more English just nearly always means more opportunities best way to improve your communication skills what's the first thing you think of reading anybody else yep and practicing practice practice practice the more you practice the better you're going to get going to class especially at a higher level of language going to class is important because most of the time when you're if you're talking to somebody on the street often at work depending on your job you may not be developing the more complex language skills at a higher level of communication skill so going to classes can help you to kind of focus and refine your skills at a higher level okay of course reviewing and practicing always makes sense there are lots of resources on the internet you've probably already found books newspapers all kinds of things using English whenever you can in any place you can it just helps you to get a better feel for it and helps you to build confidence right and it takes time any of you have small children when your children go to school if English if they didn't understand English before when they go to school they will just soak it all up right children will learn so fast they'll be fluent before you know it we as adults don't learn that quickly right it takes us a little longer so it's important to kind of be patient with yourself too and make sure you put in the time you need to meet your goals so measuring communication skills in Manitoba as well as across the country we use Canadian language benchmarks as a way to measure and describe your ability to communicate it describes only what you can do in English so describes proficiency and also your progress in these four skill areas listening speaking reading and writing Canadian language benchmarks were designed and put together about 15 years ago and put into popular use in about 2000 there are 12 levels that describe a beginner stage intermediate and advanced now we only test up until benchmark level 8 I'll explain that more as we go along the advanced stage we don't have classes to help you progress through the advanced stage only to get there in the first place okay this is the website for the online self-assessment you can in English or in French you can test yourself for your listening skills and your reading skills okay this is not an official Canadian language benchmark test but it will give you an idea of what your skills are the Center for Canadian language benchmarks this is the place where they have it's kind of the central spot for everything to do with Canadian language benchmarks they have lots of information on the website you can go and take a look through there both in English and in French as well you'll find check lists you'll find resources research done on them anything you want to know about them so the process in Manitoba for for settlement begins with Manitoba start and you've all been there they have information about employment settlement integration services and then they send you on to the Entry Program for orientation life in Winnipeg the kinds of things that you can expect the things that you can look for when you need them and then they'll send you on possibly - well Ark Winnipeg English language assessment and referral center we do obviously a language assessment and then referral into English language classes if you decide you want to do that so here's the ways that we can help you in this process first of all at well Ark what we're gonna do is talk with you about what your goals are what is it that you want to do and then we can help you to make a plan to improve your English as needed to meet those goals we'll give you information about language classes throughout the city and and then and then refer you to them so we'll send the information that you want about the school you want to go to to the school and then we'll talk with you about how your English skill relates to what your other goals are they may have to do with employment education community etc so before you come to see us at well Ark we want you to think about a few things think about what your goals are right so if your goal is to set up your own professional engineering company I want you to consider what are the language skills that you would need in order to be successful at that whatever your goals are what are the language skills you need as a part of that think about your own family so do you have children that need to be picked up and dropped off do you work shifts do you have any health conditions that would mean you could only go to school part-time for example or you needed accessibility in a classroom the part of the city you live in plays a role in where you're going to go to school you don't want to go to school in the far north part of the city if you live in the way part far south part of the city now up until now what has happened is in the last few days of your classes here at entry you would get a slip of paper like this that would give you an appointment date and time to come to well argh I think they've changed that a bit so that now if you want to take an English language assessment you talk to them at the front desk and they will then make an appointment for you but this will give you the time and date of your appointment and importantly our phone number so if you get a slip of paper that says here's the date and time of your appointment and you look at that and say I have a job interview that day or a doctor's appointment or something else there's the phone number please please call us let us know that you can't come we'll make a new appointment for you ok you're gonna be at our office for probably up to three hours when you come for that assessment so first of all if you have small children please please make sure you have child care for that day we have no place for children to play and be safe so they'll be much happier staying with someone else because you're going to be there for a while you may want to bring a water bottle with you and I love this if you're sick please don't come alright stay home take good care of yourself phone us and tell us that you can't come and we'll be happy to make a new appointment for you okay when you come for an assessment and in fact when you want to go to any settlement service office you must bring with you either your permanent resident card or your landing papers one or the other we also need to see your Manitoba health card to prove that you live here and give us your address so please make sure that that's up-to-date it needs to be up-to-date for you when for your health ok we're really sorry but if you don't bring those documents we can't do the test so we'll have to make you a new appointment and in this kind of weather you don't want to have to go out twice right so bring it the first time and we're all good and do any of you have IELTS test results some of you do okay if you have IELTS test results I would say bring them with you when you come for the assessment sometimes we can use those test results to refer you to classes that you might want to take sometimes we have to do a new benchmark test but if you bring those with you that gives us options right we can decide what's going to work best for you now as here comes your virtual tour of well Ark these lovely women at the front desk will greet you when you come into the office and they'll ask you for your documents and they'll even smile this is a reading and writing room you'll do both of those tests in this room please note no electronic devices of any kind or allowed in the room and this is one of the Assessors offices so in this room in one of those offices you'll do a one-on-one listening and speaking test so you'll listen to a recorded piece and then you'll just talk right so it's just it's some conversation about a theme that goes through that so you don't have to come up with your own ideas will give you a theme and you just have a conversation with the Assessor okay at the very end you're going to go back and meet with one of the Assessors in this office again to talk with them about your choice of classes they'll tell you about what the benchmarks mean what you do really well what you might need to work on next and then they'll help you to choose a program that'll work the Assessors there are seven of us that work at well arc we are all learners so all of us are learners of many things but in this case what might be the most germane is we are all learners of language all of us have studied and are continuing to study at least one other language we are all teachers so all of us have taught English language and other subjects both in Canada and around the world and we've all been trained to do Canadian language benchmark placement testing to assess your language skills so the Canadian language benchmark placement test is the way that we describe what your communication skills are what you can do in each of those skill areas and how we can then put you in a class that will help you to move forward the the only only purpose of the test is for placement into language classes so it shouldn't be used for anything else if you decide you want to do university education college programs other kinds of training programs the Canadian language benchmarks should never be asked for they're not a test of your academic ability they are a test only of your communicative ability in English okay so if you go to a university they'll usually ask you for an IELTS test or TOEFL can test usually there's a whole list of the tests that they'll accept for you to prove your English proficiency it's not for employment purposes so an employer should never ask you what's your Canadian language benchmark they they need to ask you some other really important questions right where did you get your education what kind of education do you have what kind of skills do you have what's your experience where have you worked before all those things are important when applying for a job when you get an interview for that job then you can prove to them just how well you communicate but don't ever put it on a resume or an application and in fact if you ever see an application form that has Canadian language benchmark listening on it come and tell me and I'll talk to them because they're not supposed to do that okay also citizenship applications some of you may be thinking about applying for citizenship in the next few years Canadian language benchmark placement test is not an acceptable proof of your language proficiency if you take this test and then go to English classes at the end of a term you'll get a report from your teacher with Canadian language benchmarks on it you can use that to apply for citizenship but you cannot use this test okay the other things you can use for citizenship application will be a cell pimp test or an IELTS test but not this way the other thing I want to add about citizenship at the moment is that right now while you are permanent residents of Canada you are eligible to take free English classes as as much as you want once you become a citizen you are no longer eligible for those classes so what I'd like to do is encourage you to take as much as you can now before you apply for citizenship okay so you'll have 30 minutes to do a reading test you'll have 30 minutes to do a writing test the listening and speaking test can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes depends how much you talk and we love to hear you talk so you know you can fill in all the time you want there may be waiting time in between tests and referral of up to about an hour and then the last thing you will do before leaving well arc is you'll have a referral time so you'll meet with the Assessor again as I said before will will explain to you what the benchmark levels are talk to you about your skills and ask you questions about so what do you want to do right what are your goals if you're a professional do you want to proceed through certification in your profession do you want to use go off into a completely different profession I've talked to people every once in a while have said things like you know I was a dentist back home I don't want to be a dentist anymore I want to be a veterinarian or something else whatever you want to do let us know as we go and do the referral because then we can help you figure out what are the right pathways to get there we guarantee you will not be there for more than three hours we'll probably be less but we want to make sure you know that you might need three hours of parking time or you're gonna be there for three hours okay so I already told you about this the referral time your goals your situation will tell you about all the programs that are available and and we won't tell you you have to go to this one or you have to go to that one will tell you what's appropriate for you and for your goals and you'll decide so freee ale classes happen all over the city there are part-time classes so if you're working part-time or full-time and you have limited time available to you you can take two evenings a week or three or four morning's or afternoons there are evening classes available to you there are full-time classes full-time is nine o'clock to 3 o'clock Monday through Friday you can do 10 week blocks of full-time classes or 20 week blocks there are specialized programs so for professions in particular Agrella gist accountants engineers teachers doctors nurses sorry I'm not sure if we have a specialized program for mechanics but there may be something at Red River College so there's a range of specialized programs that will focus on vocabulary in particular in your particular field there are volunteer programs so you can meet with someone who's a native speaker of English to help you practice the volunteers maybe people in your profession as well so they have some knowledge of how to move within that field there are neighborhood programs that usually have childcare associated with them so if you need to take your children to school with you that's a possibility there are online programs sometimes especially people who work shift work who have odd hours can't get to classes regularly there are online classes and activities that you can you to just continue to upgrade your skills before you leave well Ark you'll get a form that looks like this so it has this is all information about you just basic information about your address phone number the languages you speak your years of education Canadian language benchmark numbers be in these boxes and then down here is a description or comments that the Assessor makes about your skills in these areas and that may also describe any particular situation that you may have so because this goes to the school you choose to register in this may say this person needs to go and pick up their children at 3:30 so we're looking at this class because and in this location because it's close by and we can work things out it may say this person works from 8 o'clock at night till 6:00 in the morning and so is going to come to school from 9:00 to 12:00 it kind of gives the teacher a heads up that you might be tired by noon - all right so information about what you need to do and what factors in to your choices and then the school that you're going to attend will be listed here as well as the name of your Assessor so that you can contact that person again if you need you okay now most of you I'm guessing studied English in your home countries right did you use textbooks in Canada you may find that classes are a bit different you won't have any textbooks you may use real-world things like newspapers magazines your teacher will have activities and exercises planned for you so that you can practice grammar and vocabulary I remember taking French in highest in school and having to memorize long lists of verbs and how to conjugate them right you won't have to do that here you'll work is in a partnership with your teacher and with other people the class to practice and use what you're learning so we're gonna focus on improving communication skills and as adults I think that's the way most of us learn better is by using it regularly and repeating right using what we're learning in an e al class in Winnipeg you will work as partners with your teachers as I said you'll be practicing skills you'll be keeping a portfolio as well and a portfolio will collect pieces of your work that may be written pieces you may have a CD or a DVD to to be able to watch or listen to yourself and sort of mark your improvement over time over the course of the hours that you spend in an e al class your teacher will be watching the work that you're doing and working with you on what you need to do to improve at the end of that time they'll give you a report that that talks about your progress and it will also use Canadian language benchmarks to describe your process progress so if you begin class with a benchmark level six in listening for example after a full time session your teacher might say you were a pretty strong benchmark level six when you started and now you're showing me the skills of a benchmark level seven or eight or whatever so they will do that in a report that says these are the skills that you're working on and that you have improved on your portfolio will be a collection of the work that you've been doing so that you can see your progress and so that your teacher can see your progress in the first year that people are in a new place lots of things may change right you may start out with one job and then realize it's not the job for you and you move to a different one you may get promoted you may decide to go back to university or college you may have a baby all right things may change in your life that said that that needs to change in your schoolwork as well so if you need to change schools for whatever reason come back and see us at well Ark we probably don't have to do a new test we may just refer you to a different school just let us know what what changes are happening so the first thing we do is is get you into a dull tal classes so that you can improve your skills as much as possible there are a bunch of other opportunities for adult education and I'm just gonna sort of briefly go through what those are so you have a quick idea anyway so high school is for people up to 21 years of age who who did not finish high school in their home country so this is mostly teenagers right mostly they'll be 15 to 19 but can continue in the K to 12 process until they're 21 years old to finish high school probably should have a good strong level of skill in English in order to be able to be successful to really understand what's happening in classes but there are also high schools many throughout the city that have ei ell programs so if you have a teenager who needs ei L support they will get that in high school as well oh and it's free Adult Learning Centres are another another venue for high school for adults so if you are over 21 and did not finish high school in your home country you can attend an Adult Learning Center here which will help you to achieve a high school diploma right if you finished high school in your home country you don't need a high school diploma from Canada usually we'll go on to high school or to university and college stuff after one of the things you might need to do is upgrade skills so if for example you finished high school in your home country and you want to take a nursing course at Red River College they might say your high school diploma is just fine but you didn't take high school biology in your home country you took all these other things but you didn't take biology you need to take that before you can go into our program so then an Adult Learning Center would be someplace you could take just the biology course or just math or something okay again strong English communication skills are required in order to really understand the content of the classes you're taking the only thing I want to put in here is that you can take an English class at a Adult Learning Center but a high school English class is not the same as an English language class so if I went to what country you from sorry Oman if I went to Amman and lived there for a while and decided I wanted to take a couple of high school classes your first language is is Arabic and I decided I want to take an Arabic class in high school I wouldn't necessarily learn how to speak Arabic right I would learn the literature of the country though they would try to teach me they wouldn't because I don't speak Arabic but it would be about about communication and culture and literature in Arabic in Canada that's the same sort of thing an English class in high school is about culture is about the history of literature is not about English language skills that's not their focus they're their courses are designed for people whose first language is English so if you want to improve your English skills you're better off to take an English language class and then take high school classes if you want to do some upgrading oh yeah also free adult literacy centers are designed for people who have a good conversational level of English so they can speak and and listen they have good language skills but they don't have good reading and writing skills so that they need to focus on that an adult literacy center focuses only on reading skills and writing skills some have some numeracy and computer skills as well but they focus on literacy and they're also free college and university courses not free these ones there are there's a whole range of academic programs and specific professional programs and hands-on programs and there's there's such a variety you'd have to go and take a look at each of the schools the entrance requirements for each of them are fairly different as I said before none of them should ask you for Canadian language benchmarks because it's not a test of your academic English ability they want to know that your academic English skill is strong enough for you to be successful right so they'll ask for TOEFL can test IELTS me lab there's a whole list lots of times people come and say to me I'm taking my high school diploma because my auntie told me I need that in order to get into university now I know that auntie's mean well and that they love you very much and they want to be helpful mostly they're wrong when tell you those sorts of things whenever you want to take a university or college class please go and talk to the school talk to them directly make an appointment to see the person in the department you're interested in take your transcripts from any previous education take your any kinds of documents you need your resume and talk with them about what you need to do nearly all of them I think almost all the time they will accept high school diplomas from whatever country you come from right again they may ask you for one course but they'll accept your high school diploma but going ask them what you need in person because this is not free there are funding sources available one of them right so funding sources Manitoba Student Aid can provide some loans and sometimes some grants for further education you can find some of that at the government of Manitoba website seed Winnipeg also has some low-interest loans for for professional accreditation in particular so if you're a professional and you you want to go through the certification process that can often cost money right because you may be paying for exams you may be paying for courses textbooks mentoring of various kinds Cee'd Winnipeg can provide some low-interest loans to help you to get through all of that there are a variety of settlement services and you've probably learned about most of them at this point we're gonna I'm going to run through them quickly they can just help you to adjust to life here so Manitoba start has a variety of programs courses and coaches that can help you to sort out some of these issues around trades apprenticeship professional skills finding employment writing resumes cover letters all that sort of thing neighbourhood immigrant settlement workers work in most of the areas of the city and they can get there they're a great resource for whatever is happening in your community because they'll know about about groups about stores about schools about connecting people to each other daycares things like that so there's a list of these are the communities that they operate in throughout the city welcome place particularly focuses on helping refugees in Manitoba helping them to find accommodation build some community adjust to life in Canada that might be wildly different than the life they had before the immigrant Center also has a variety of services they have some driver's ed programs they computer classes in fact they have a computer lending program so you can talk to them about borrowing a computer if you don't have one at home they have employment services translation services if you have documents that need to be translated into English talk to them at the immigrant Center seed Winnipeg as I mentioned earlier seed is an economic development agency they they can help you if you're interested in starting a small business both with loans and with courses and kind of support along the way they provide as I said low-interest loans for here going through certification processes and they have saving money plans that can help people to just put away for a particular project a Koi francophone has services in French for lazy migunov francophone and all the same kinds of services as others but on francais so housing employment education etc and here's the well arc website so you'll find information about us at well arc on this website also links to other organizations and resources so there are questions and answers there's even pictures of all the Assessors I didn't do that by the way emigrate Manitoba website is the government of Manitoba site again has links to settlement services throughout the province you take a look down the side here it'll tell you about the Provincial Nominee program if you're interested in that settling in Manitoba any particular issues around work in Manitoba and the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website we'll also link you to settlement services but settlement services across the country so if for some reason you decide you don't want to live in this wonderful city anymore and you're going to move to a different one you can link to resources in other cities across Canada as well right also you can find information here about sponsoring family to come to Canada as well about applying for citizenship a whole range of of topics what if I take the test and get a low mark and I want to do it again can I my short answer is no you don't need to do the test again so but so if let's say you come and you do the test and I say you're a benchmark level six in all four skills and you say oh no I'm not I'm a benchmark level eight I would say well that's not what you showed me today what you showed me today was the skills and a benchmark level six so what you can do is go to class when you get into class your teacher will be constantly kind of evaluating along the way if in the first couple of weeks of class your teacher says boy that Deborah she was crazy you're not a benchmark level six you're a benchmark level eight they'll move you into a benchmark level eight class right what we provide is a starting point a place for you a way for you to get into class right away that we believe is the best class for you now we might be wrong once in a while but usually it's pretty accurate so you you wouldn't need to do the test again if you are in class for six months and then you get a different job and you stop going to class and then six months later you want to take classes again you can bring your report from your teacher and we don't need to do a new test because your teacher saw what you were doing and will place you in classes with that if it's more than a year since you had a last assessment whether that's us or from a teacher then we would do a new test and we would do that only because we want to make sure that the class you get into is the right one for you if it's too low you'll be bored right you're not gonna learn anything because you'll be just you'll know what's going on if it's too high you'll be frustrated all right we want you to be in the class that will help you to move the most this is a key question for all of you do you have to take the Canadian language benchmark placement test is it required once again the short answer is no it is not required so as we said before you don't need this for employment you don't need it for academic work you don't need it for anything other than taking English language classes so if you want to take English language classes please come to El Arc we'll do an assessment and we'll find you the best class possible if you say I don't want to take English classes right now I feel like I'm doing just fine then you don't need to come and have the test right if you change your mind in six months you can always call us and say I changed my mind I really want to take English classes now and then we'll do the test and get you into classes for for education doesn't want to go to class then you don't need the test right if you just want to get a rough idea of what your English level is take a look at those posters the can do checklists there's the online self-assessment that'll give you a general idea right but but we're not allowed to do the test unless you want to go to English classes our class is free you already know the answer to this yes and do you need a clb for an academic program no no now I understand that sometimes is just interesting right to know what your level is unfortunately we're not allowed to to do a test because you're curious right we don't have time honestly to do that check they with the online self-assessment like I said it's not official but it will give you an idea of where your benchmarks lie all right and if you already know that you communicate well you don't have any problems communicating with colleagues or neighbors or friends or whatever then and you don't want to take English classes then there's no need to do this if you have an IELTS test that is an overall score of 6.5 or higher I would say you don't need to take English classes 6.5 is the the IELTS score that's required for entrance into university in college if you got us an overall six point five or seven but you got a 5.0 in writing and you say you know I know my language is really good but I really need help with my writing because at some point in the next few years I want to go back to university then by all means come bring the IELTS test we can probably send you to writing classes without doing a new test we would use the IELTS and say okay let's focus on your writing and here's where you can take classes it's all clear oh you're great there we go so on behalf of the people of Manitoba welcome to Winnipeg we're glad you're here [Applause] you in this presentation tonight we're going to talk about the importance of communication skills you probably know a lot about this already but we're going to just kind of confirm what we know about how important it is to communicate well at work at home in the neighborhood etc I'll explain to you what Canadian language benchmarks are what they do and why we use them we'll talk about well arc which is the Winnipeg English language assessment and referral centre hopefully dispel any myths that you've heard about that we'll talk about the tests that we use to describe your English language skills and then we'll look at English language classes and other kinds of opportunities that are available to you communication skills so what are communication skills what communication skills do you know that are really important silence all right so first of all presenting your ideas you have to be able to speak in a way that other people will understand if you want to persuade someone about your opinions give them information tell a story all kinds of things being able to do that well means that people will really hear you listening to other people could be a lecture at a university it could be a news broadcaster could be the movies or television could be somebody you're talking to at the bus stop right about the weather or whatever being able to read texts read safety information read well information about your job about your pay about contracts those sorts of things an audience awareness is a really important piece so communication skills apply to weather in different ways when you're talking to a child for example than they do when you're talking to your boss right you would speak differently to the cashier at the grocery store probably than you would to the Prime Minister of Canada all right so audience awareness is a critical part of communication skill English classes in Canada are designed to help you to improve those communication skills kind of all the way around I think you'd already know the answer to this communication skills are important in in the community so you want to talk to your neighbors you want to talk to you might need to talk to emergency people right health care practitioners fire fighters whatever people you might have to find out about whether you're gonna get a ticket for parking your car in front of your house and running your fault your cord across to the driveway you've heard about that in the news never mind independence for you I expect this is not as big a piece but for some families where mom or dad don't speak English well and the children speak English because they learn really quickly at school they may have to take their children with them to go to a doctor to go to the grocery store to be independent it's important to be able to communicate yourself your employment and education may depend on you being able to communicate well if you're a professional an engineer an accountant a teacher a doctor you need to be able to communicate in order to do your job in kids some cases when you have if you're taking about two people in a job and there's a promotion coming if all other things are equal so there's the same level of skill and experience you've been in the job the same amount of time the person with better communication skills may be the one who gets promoted rather than the other and for education certainly communication skills are vital to be able to do do continued education especially in a post-secondary institution you need to be able to understand it's happening in order to succeed in the courses you're taking more English just nearly always means more opportunities best way to improve your communication skills what's the first thing you think of reading anybody else listening just trying to make recitation you're both right yep and practicing practice practice practice the more you practice the better you're going to get going to class especially at a higher level of language going to class is important because most of the time when you're if you're talking to somebody on the street often at work depending on your job you may not be developing the more complex language skills at a higher level of communication skill so going to classes can help you to kind of focus and refine your skills at a higher level of course reviewing and practicing always makes sense there are lots of resources on the internet you've probably already found books newspapers all kinds of things using English whenever you can in any place you can it just helps you to get a better feel for it and helps you to build confidence and it takes time any of you have small children when your children go to school if English if they didn't understand English before when they go to school they will just soak it all up right children will learn so fast they'll be fluent before you know it we as adults don't learn that quickly right it takes us a little longer so it's important to kind of be patient with yourself too and make sure you put in the time you need to meet your goals so measuring communication skills in Manitoba as well as across the country we use Canadian language benchmarks as a way to measure and describe your ability to communicate it describes only what you can do in English so describes proficiency and also your progress in these four skill areas listening speaking reading and writing Canadian language benchmarks were designed and put together about 15 years ago and put into popular use in about 2000 there are twelve levels that describe a beginner stage intermediate and advanced now we only test up until benchmark level 8 I'll explain that more as we go along the advanced stage we don't have classes to help you progress through the advanced stage only to get there in the first place okay so the beginner stage benchmark levels one to four and just to give you a quick overview benchmark level one that's at that level a person may have only a very few words right so they may be able they probably be able to understand if you ask what's there what's your name what's your address but may not have many more words than that I always figured my um if I was going to be tested in a similar way in Kurian my benchmark level would be one or less right I can say I'm young I say oh that's about it right I could probably copy simple information but I don't understand it at benchmark level three a person has developed more vocabulary so they've got a few more words and are putting some of those words together to build phrases it may not be full sentences yet but phrases okay and so with those phrases we'll be able to talk a bit about their family their job if I say tell me about your home country I'll be able to tell me some things you know what I really like about my home country what I miss about the food or the the mountains or the valleys or whatever moving into the intermediate stage at benchmark level five a person can have lots of conversations and fairly easily and their conversations about everyday things about concrete events a person is beginning to have some more abstract language at a benchmark level five using the phone it says here is still difficult and that would be because a benchmark five although conversations are easy we still rely on seeing faces right on seeing hands flapping around on on getting gestures and understanding what a person is saying so using the phone might still be a bit difficult just because you can't see those things to give you extra clues but at a benchmark level five a person can write a letter an email can make themselves understood they have good basic grammar and are moving into some more advanced stage right my benchmark level eight you will be able to stand up here at the front and talk about any topic for fifteen or twenty minutes in English I might this is the stage or this level is is where you can begin to think about post-secondary education and one of the pieces here that's key is reading in English to get information so it's different than just reading a novel or reading a newspaper you might be reading a textbook right for post-secondary education in particular you might be reading an academic journal you might be reading or you are reading to get information in order to do something else with that information right now benchmark level 8 is the highest level that we test for because that's the highest level of actual ei l classes that we have available for you that doesn't mean that your English is perfect it doesn't mean that that no one will ever notice that it's not your first language at a benchmark level eight you will still make a few mistakes with grammar or with vocabulary but they won't stop you from being understood right you may still sound like it's not your first language but you'll be well able to communicate anything that you need to communicate so more information about CL B's you'll notice that in the hallways here there are posters right along the wall that have a list of the things that people can do in each of the skill areas at each level there's an online self-assessment then I'll show you the website for in a moment your teacher can give you a checklist of four so if your teacher says you know I think you're probably about a benchmark level six she or he could give you a benchmark checklist for levels five six and seven and you could start checking off things that you know that you can already do well or things that you want to be able to do better this is the website for the online self-assessment you can in English or in French you can test yourself for your listening skills and your reading skills okay this is not an official Canadian language benchmark test but it will give you an idea of what your skills are the Center for Canadian language benchmarks this is the place where they have it's kind of the central spot for everything to do with Canadian language benchmarks they have lots of information on the website you can go and take a look through they're both in English and in French as well you'll find check lists you'll find resources research done on them anything you want to know about them so the process in Manitoba for for settlement begins with Manitoba start and you've all been there they have information about employment settlement integration services and then they send you on to the Entry Program for orientation to life in Winnipeg the kinds of things that you can expect the things that you can look for when you need them and then they'll send you on possibly - well Ark Winnipeg English language assessment and referral center we do obviously language assessment and then referral into English language classes if you decide you want to do that so here's the ways that we can help you in this process first of all at well arc what we're gonna do is talk with you about what your goals are what is it that you want to do and then we can help you to make a plan to improve your English as needed to meet those goals we'll give you information about language classes throughout the city and and then and then refer you to them so we'll send the information that you want about the school you want to go to to the school and then we'll talk with you about how your English skill relates to what your other goals are they may have to do with employment education community etc so before you come to see us at well arc we want you to think about a few things think about what your goals are so if your goal is to set up your own professional engineering company I want you to consider what are the language skills that you would need in order to be successful at that whatever your goals are what are the language skills you need as a part of that think about your own family so do you have children that need to be picked up and dropped off do you work shifts do you have any health conditions that would mean you could only go to school part-time for example or you needed accessibility in a classroom the part of the city you live in plays a role in where you're going to go to school you don't want to go to school in the far north part of the city if you live in the way--the far far south part of the city now up until now what has happened is in the last few days of your classes here at entry you would get a slip of paper like this that would give you an appointment date and time to come to work I think they've changed that a bit so that now if you want to take an English language assessment you talk to them at the front desk and they will then make an appointment for you but this will give you the time and date of your appointment and importantly our phone number so if you get a slip of paper that says here's the date and time of your appointment and you look at that and say I have a job interview that day or a doctor's appointment or something else there's the phone number please please call us let us know that you can't come we'll make a new appointment for you okay you're gonna be at our office for probably up to three hours when you come for that assessment so first of all if you have small children please please make sure you have childcare for that day we have no place for children to play and be safe so they'll be much happier staying with someone else because you're gonna be there for a while you may want to bring a water bottle with you and I love this if you're sick please don't come alright stay home take good care of yourself phone us and tell us that you can't come and we'll be happy to make a new appointment for you okay when you come for an assessment and in fact when you want to go to any settlement Service office you must bring with you either your permanent resident card or your landing papers one or the other we also need to see your Manitoba health card to prove that you live here and give us your address so please make sure that that's up-to-date it needs to be up-to-date for you when for your health okay we're really sorry but if you don't bring those documents we can't do the test so we'll have to make you a new appointment and this kind of weather you don't want to have to go out twice right so bring it the first time and we're all good and do any of you have IELTS test results some of you do okay if you have IELTS test results I would say bring them with you when you come for the assessment sometimes we can use those test results to refer you to classes that you might want to take sometimes we have to do a new benchmark test but if you bring those with you that gives us options right we can decide what's gonna work best for you now as here comes your virtual tour of well Ark these lovely women at the front desk will greet you when you come into the office and they'll ask you for your documents and they'll even smile this is a reading and writing room you'll do both of those tests in this room please note no electronic devices of any kind or allowed in the room and this is one of the Assessors offices so in this room in one of those offices you'll do a one-on-one listening and speaking test so you'll listen to a recorded piece and then you'll just talk right so it's just it's some conversation about a theme that goes through that so you don't have to come up with your own ideas will give you a theme and you just have a conversation with the Assessor okay at the very end you're going to go back and meet with one of the Assessors in this office again to talk with them about your choice of classes they'll tell you about what the benchmarks mean what you do really well what you might need to work on next and then they'll help you to choose a program that'll work the Assessors there are seven of us that work at well arc we are all learners so all of us are learners of many things but in this case what might be the most germane is we are all learners of language all of us have studied and are continuing to study at least one other language we are all teachers so all of us have taught English language and other subjects both in Canada and around the world and we've all been trained to do Canadian language benchmark placement testing to assess your language skills so the Canadian language benchmark placement test is the way that we describe what your communication skills are what you can do in each of those skill areas and how we can then put you in a class that will help you to move forward the the only only purpose of the test is for placement into language classes so it shouldn't be used for anything else if you decide you want to do university education College programs other kinds of training programs the Canadian language benchmarks should never be asked for they're not a test of your academic ability they are a test only of your communicative ability in English okay so if you go to a university they'll usually ask you for an IELTS test or TOEFL can test usually there's a whole list of the tests that they'll accept for you to prove your English proficiency it's not for employment purposes so an employer should never ask you what's your Canadian language benchmark they they need to ask you some other really important questions right where did you get your education what kind of education do you have what kind of skills do you have what's your experience where have you worked before all those things are important when applying for a job when you get an interview for that job then you can prove to them just how well you communicate but don't ever put it on resume or an application and in fact if you ever see an application form that has Canadian language benchmark listening on it come and tell me and I'll talk to them cuz they're not supposed to do that okay also citizenship applications some of you may be thinking about applying for citizenship in the next few years Canadian language benchmark placement test is not an acceptable proof of your language proficiency if you take this test and then go to English classes at the end of a term you'll get a report from your teacher with Canadian language benchmarks on it you can use that to apply for citizenship but you cannot use this test the other things you can use for citizenship application will be a cell pip test or an IELTS test but not this one the only thing I want to add about citizenship at the moment is that right now while you are permanent residents of Canada you are eligible to take free English classes as as much as you want once you become a citizen you are no longer eligible for those classes so what I'd like to do is encourage you to take as much as you can now before you apply for citizenship okay so you'll have 30 minutes to do a reading test you'll have 30 minutes to do a writing test the listening and speaking tests can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes depends how much you talk and we love to hear you talk so you know you can fill in all the time you want there may be waiting time in between tests and referral of up to about an hour and then the last thing you will do before leaving well arc is you'll have a referral time so you'll meet with the Assessor again as I said before we'll will explain to you what the benchmark levels are talk to you about your skills and ask you questions about so what do you want to do right what are your goals if you're a professional do you want to proceed through certification in your profession do you want to use go off into a completely different profession I've talked to people every once in a while have said things like you know I was a dentist back home I don't want to be a dentist anymore I want to be a veterinarian or something else whatever you want to do let us know as we go and do the referral because then we can help you figure out what are the right pathways to get there we guarantee you will not be there for more than three hours we'll probably be less but we want to make sure you know that you might need three hours of parking time or you're gonna be there for three hours okay so I already told you about this the referral time your goals your situation will tell you about all the programs that are available and and we won't tell you you have to go to this one or you have to go to that one will tell you what's appropriate for you and for your goals and you'll decide so free e-a-l classes happen all over the city there are part-time classes so if you're working part-time or full-time and you have limited time available to you you can take two evenings a week or three or four morning's or afternoons there are evening classes available to you there are full-time classes full-time is nine o'clock to 3 o'clock Monday through Friday you can do 10-week blocks of full-time classes or 20 week blocks there are specialized programs so for professions in particular a growl adjusts accountants engineers teachers doctors nurses sorry not sure if we have a specialized program for mechanics but there may be something at Red River College so there's a range of specialized programs that will focus on vocabulary in particular in your particular field there are volunteer programs so you can meet with someone who's a native speaker of English to help you practice the volunteers maybe people in your profession as well so they have some knowledge of how to move within that field there are neighborhood programs that usually have childcare associated with them so if you need to take your children to school with you that's a possibility there are online programs sometimes especially people who work shift work who have odd hours can't get to classes regularly there are online classes and activities that you can use to just continue to upgrade your skills before you leave well Ark you'll get a form that looks like this so it has this is all information about you just basic information about your address phone number the languages you speak your years of education Canadian language benchmark numbers be in these boxes and then down here is a description or comments that the Assessor makes about your skills in these areas and that may also describe any particular situation that you may have so because this goes to the school you choose to register in this may say this person needs to go and pick up their children at 3:30 so we're looking at this class because and and this location because it's close by and we can work things out it may say this person works from 8 o'clock at night till 6:00 in the morning and so is going to come to school from 9:00 to 12:00 it kind of gives the teacher a heads up that you might be tired by noon to write so information about what you need to do and what factors in to your choices and then the school that you're going to attend will be listed here as well as the name of your Assessor so that you can contact that person again if you need to now most of you I'm guessing studied English in your home countries right did you use textbooks in Canada you may find the classes are a bit different you won't have any textbooks you may use real-world things like newspapers magazines your teacher will have activities and exercises planned for you so that you can practice grammar and vocabulary I remember taking French in highest in school and having to memorize long lists of verbs and how to conjugate them right you won't have to do that here you'll work in a partnership with your teacher and with other people in the class to practice and use what you're learning so we're going to focus on improving communication skills and as adults I think that's the way most of us learn better is by using it regularly and repeating right using what we're learning in an e al class in Winnipeg you will work as partners with your teachers as I said you'll be practicing skills you'll be keeping a portfolio as well and a portfolio will collect pieces of your work that may be written pieces you may have a CD or a DVD too to be able to watch or listen to yourself and and sort of mark your improvement over time over the course of the hours that you spend in an e al class your teacher will be watching the work that you're doing and working with you on what you need to do to improve at the end of that time they'll give you a report that that talks about your progress and it will also use Canadian language benchmarks to describe your process progress so if you begin class with a benchmark level 6 in listening for example after a full time session your teacher might say you are a pretty strong benchmark level 6 when you started and now you're showing me the skills of a benchmark level 7 or 8 or whatever so they will do that in a report that says these are the skills that you're working on and that you have improved on your portfolio will be a collection of the work that you've been doing so that you can see your progress and so that your teacher can see your progress in the first year that people are in a new place lots of things may change right you may start out with one job and then realize it's not the job for you and you move to a different one you may get promoted you may decide to go back to university or college you may have a baby right things may change in your life that said that that need to change in your schoolwork as well so if you need to change schools for whatever reason come back and see us at well lark we probably don't have to do a new test we may just refer you to a different school just let us know what what changes are happening so the first thing we do is is get you into a dull tal classes so that you can improve your skills as much as possible there are a bunch of other opportunities for adult education and I'm just gonna sort of briefly go through what those are so you have a quick idea anyway so high school is for people up to 21 years of age who did not finish high school in their home country so this is mostly teenagers right mostly they'll be 15 to 19 but can continue in the K to 12 process until they're 21 years old to finish high school probably should have a good strong level of skill in English in order to be able to be successful to really understand what's happening in classes but there are also high schools many throughout the city that have ei ell programs so if you have a teenager who needs ei L support they will get that in high school as well oh and it's free Adult Learning Centres are another another venue for high school for adults so if you are over 21 and did not finish high school in your home country you can attend an Adult Learning Center here which will help you to achieve a high school diploma right if you finished high school in your home country you don't need a high school diploma from Canada usually we'll go on to high school or to university and college stuff after one of the things you might need to do is upgrade skills so if for example you finished high school in your home country and you want to take a nursing course at Red River College they might say your high school diploma is just fine but you didn't take high school biology in your home country you took all these other things but you didn't take biology you need to take that before you can go into our program so then an Adult Learning Center would be someplace you could take just the biology course or just math or something again strong English communication skills are required in order to really understand the content of the classes you're taking the only thing I want to put in here is that you can take an English class at an Adult Learning Center but a high school English class is not the same as an English language class so if I went to what country you from sorry Oman if I went to Amman and lived there for a while and decided I wanted to take a couple of high school classes your first language is is Arabic and I decided I want to take an Arabic class in high school I wouldn't necessarily learn how to speak Arabic right I would learn the literature of the country that they would try to teach me they wouldn't because I don't speak Arabic but it would be about about communication and culture and literature in Arabic in Canada that's the same sort of thing an English class in high school is about culture is about the history of literature is not about English language skills that's not their focus they're their courses are designed for people whose first language is English so if you want to improve your English skills you're better off to take an English language class and then take high school classes if you want to do some upgrading oh yeah also free adult literacy centers are designed for people who have a good conversational level of English so they can speak and and listen they have good language skills but they don't have good reading and writing skills so thought they need to focus on that an adult literacy center focuses only on reading skills and writing skills some have some numeracy and computer skills as well but they focus on literacy and they're also free college and university courses not free these ones there are there's a whole range of academic programs and specific professional programs and hands-on programs and there's there's such a variety you'd have to go and take a look at each of the schools the entrance requirements for each of them are fairly different as I said before none of them would ask you for Canadian language benchmarks because it's not a test of your academic English ability they want to know that your academic English skill is strong enough for you to be successful right so they'll ask for TOEFL can test IELTS me lab there's a whole list lots of times people come and say to me I'm taking my high school diploma because my auntie told me I need that in order to get into university now I know that auntie's mean well and that they love you very much and they to be helpful mostly they're wrong when they tell you those sorts of things whenever you want to take a university or college class please go and talk to the school talk to them directly make an appointment to see the person in the department you're interested in take your transcripts from any previous education take your any kinds of documents you need your resume and talk with them about what you need to do nearly all of them I think almost all the time they will accept high school diplomas from whatever country you come from again they may ask you for one course but they'll accept your high school diploma but going ask them what you need in person because this is not free there are funding sources available one of them so funding sources Manitoba Student Aid can provide some loans and sometimes some grants for further education you can find some of that at the government of Manitoba website seed Winnipeg also has some low-interest loans for for professional accreditation in particular so if you're a professional and you you want to go through the certification process that can often cost money right because you may be paying for exams you may be paying for courses textbooks mentoring of various kinds Cee'd Winnipeg can provide some low-interest loans to help you to get through all of that there are a variety of settlement services and you've probably learned about most of them at this point we're gonna I'm going to run through them quickly they can just help you to adjust to life here so Manitoba start has a variety of programs courses and coaches that can help you to sort out some of these issues around trades apprenticeship professional skills finding employment writing resumes cover letters all that sort of thing neighbourhood immigrant settlement workers work in most of the areas of the city and they can get there they're a great resource for whatever is happening in your community because they'll know about about groups about stores about schools about connecting people to each other daycares things like that so there's a list of these are the communities that they operate in throughout the city welcome place particularly focuses on helping refugees in Manitoba helping them to find accommodation build some community adjust to life in Canada that might be wildly different than the life they had before the immigrant Center also has a variety of services they have some driver's ed programs they computer classes in fact they have a computer lending program so you can talk to them about borrowing a computer if you don't have one at home they have employment services translation services if you have documents that need to be translated into English talk to them at the immigrant Center seed Winnipeg as I mentioned earlier seed is an economic development agency they they can help you if you're interested in starting a small business both with loans and with courses and kind of support along the way they provide as I said low-interest loans where you're going through certification processes and they have saving money plans that can help people just put away for a particular project a Koi francophone has services in French for lazy McGrath francophone and all the same kinds of services as others but on frosty so housing employment education etc and here's the well lark website so you'll find information about us at well arc on this website also links to other organizations and resources so there are questions and answers there's even pictures of all the Assessors I didn't do that by the way emigrate Manitoba website is the government of Manitoba site again has links to settlement services throughout the province you take a look down the side here it'll tell you about the Provincial Nominee program if you're interested in that settling in Manitoba any particular issues around work in Manitoba and the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website will also link you to settlement services but settlement services across the country so if for some reason you decide you don't want to live in this wonderful city anymore and you're going to move to a different one you can link to resources in other cities across Canada as well also you can find information here about sponsoring family to come to Canada as well about applying for citizenship a whole range of topics what if I take the test and get a low mark and I want to do it again can I my short answer is no you don't need to do the test again so but so if let's say you come and you do the test and I say you're a benchmark level six in all four skills and you say oh no I'm not I'm a benchmark level eight I would say well that's not what you showed me today what you showed me today was the skills and a benchmark level six so what you can do is go to class when you get into class your teacher will be constantly kind of evaluating along the way if in the first couple of weeks of class your teacher says boy that Deborah she was crazy you're not a benchmark level six you're a benchmark level eight they'll move you into a benchmark level eight class right what we provide is a starting point a place for you a way for you to get into class right away that we believe is the best class for you now we might be wrong once in a while but usually it's pretty accurate so you you wouldn't need to do the test again if you are in class for six months and then you get a different job and you stop going to class and then six months later you want to take classes again you can bring your report from your teacher and we don't need to do a new test because your teacher saw what you were doing and will place you in classes with that if it's more than a year since you had a last assessment whether that's us or from a teacher then we would do a new test and we would do that only because we want to make sure that the class you get into is the right one for you if it's too low you'll be bored right you're not gonna learn anything because you'll be just you'll know what's going on if it's too high you'll be frustrated all right we want you to be in the class that will help you to move the most this is a key question for all of you do you have to take the Canadian language benchmark placement test is it required once again the short answer is no it is not required so as we said before you don't need this for employment you don't need it for academic work you don't need it for anything other than taking English language classes so if you want to take English language classes please come to LR we'll do an assessment and we'll find you the best class possible if you say I don't want to take English classes right now I feel like I'm doing just fine then you don't need to come and have the test right if you change your mind in six months you can always call us and say I changed my mind I really want to take English classes now and then we'll do the test and get you into classes for for education if someone doesn't want to go to class no then you don't need the test right if you just want to get a rough idea of what your English level is take a look at those posters the can do checklists there's the online self-assessment that'll give you a general idea right but but we're not allowed to do the test unless you want to go to English classes our class is free you already know the answer to this yes and do you need a CLB for an academic program no now I understand that sometimes is just interesting right to know what your level is unfortunately we're not allowed to to do a test because you're curious right we don't have time honestly to do that check they with the online self-assessment like I said it's not official but it will give you an idea of where your benchmarks lie right and if you already know that you communicate well you don't have any problems communicating with colleagues or neighbors or friends or whatever then and you don't want to take English classes then there's no need to do this if you have an IELTS test that is an overall score of 6.5 or higher I would say you don't need to take English classes 6.5 is the the IELTS score that's required for entrance into university in college if you got us an overall six point five or seven but you got a 5.0 in writing and you say you know I know my language is really good but I really need help with my writing because at some point in the next few years I want to go back to university then by all means come bring the IELTS test we can probably send you to writing classes without doing a new test we would use the IELTS and say okay let's focus on your writing and here's where you can take classes it's all clear oh you're great there we go so on behalf of the people of Manitoba welcome to Winnipeg we're glad you're here [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Altered Minds Inc

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Keywords: Altered Minds Inc., ENTRY Program, AMI, Manitoba Newcomer, Manitoba Immigrant, Health, Employment, Law, Places

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Length: 106min 3sec (6363 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2017