In this article, Cathy Jones, Assessment Development Specialist, looks at the transferable skills international students naturally acquire and need to develop on life’s many journeys.
Last month I presented at PIE Live and was surprised by how large the audience was. At the same event in 2024 I spoke to an almost empty room and this time it was standing room only. I don't think I've suddenly become an attraction in just one year.
Rather, it was the topicality of what my colleague John Knott and I were talking about — Transferring International Students' Skills to the Workplace — that drew the audience. Themes associated with international students' emotional resilience, personal growth, and wellbeing were prevalent at PIE Live. There's a growing awareness and concern within the higher education community about international students' overall experience and preparedness for life after university. Just as the higher education community recognises the importance of transferable skills for students, the report Global framework on transferable skills | UNICEF argues that these are vital to all our futures.
The report gives a working definition of transferable skills as:
Cognitive Skills: having to do with "thinking" and including the ability to focus, problem-solve, make informed choices, and set plans and goals.
Social Skills: having to do with interaction with others, including the ability to communicate, collaborate, resolve conflicts, and negotiate.
Emotional Skills: having to do with skills that relate to understanding and regulating one's own emotions, coping with stress, understanding the emotions of others, and empathising with others.
The report describes transferable skills as "the central 'magic glue' connecting, reinforcing, and developing other skills (foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, digital skills, and job-specific skills." For an international student, in addition to literacy and numeracy, English language communicative ability is a foundational skill. When my colleagues and I set out to design and develop LANGUAGECERT Academic, we seized the opportunity to create a test at the centre of the intersection between foundational and transferable skills.
LANGUAGECERT Academic is, first and foremost, a test of academic English for admission purposes, but it also encourages and helps develop cognitive skills and nurtures and fosters social and emotional skills. The test assesses the linguistic foundation, prerequisite communicative abilities, and real-world language skills that are essential for the development of the transferable skills students need for the journeys ahead of them.
Language learning journey
International students go on a language learning journey. It is a long one. Getting to the proficiency level needed for higher education takes time, hard work, and resilience. The process of language learning and acquisition is not a straight path. The way is full of twists and turns and ups and downs. All language learners get stuck or plateau at some point. Language learners develop resilience, regulate their emotions, and cope with stress to weather the learning setbacks, highs, and lows before they even get to university or college.
Traditionally, high-stakes admissions tests only concern themselves with the end of this language learning journey. They assess the candidate's proficiency without accounting for learners' next steps and further challenges. As one participant remarked regretfully after our session, language proficiency for university has become more about ticking a box than about life. What a missed opportunity not to cultivate international students' existing transferable skills.
The aim of LANGUAGECERT Academic is to combine the assessment of real-world language with the development of real-life skills and holistically address the real needs of students. Each of the four skills in LANGUAGECERT Academic focuses exclusively on academic English. However, this tight academic focus does not mean the test content is narrow or restricted. The careful selection of questions, contexts, and scenarios means that the test content can be expansive and encompass the transferable skills relevant to students' everyday experiences when they continue their academic journey at university.
Obviously, international students undertake a physical journey, but the implications of this journey are not accounted for in admission tests. To address the communication needs of students' everyday life at university when they arrive in a new country, LANGUAGECERT Academic includes socio-academic scenarios, tasks, and role-plays covering diverse topics such as the benefits of campus accommodation for first-year students, part-time work, the availability of suitable food in the college canteen, and joining a campus sports club. (See my LinkedIn article: A Student in a Strange Land.)
LANGUAGECERT Academic is designed to promote the development of extra-linguistic cognitive and thinking skills, such as critical thinking, verbal reasoning, and metacognition, essential to academic literacies.
For example, the Reading test includes a task in which test takers must combine rhetorical and contextual information, infer meaning, draw out implications, and compare authorial positions and arguments. In the Writing test, test takers must analyse, evaluate, and discuss opposing viewpoints in a structured and well-reasoned way, synthesise arguments, and present their position clearly and convincingly. In the Speaking test, test takers are shown an infographic, given time to prepare, and then speak about their analysis and justify their arguments, reasoning, and conclusions. In the Listening test, test takers hear conversations about different aspects of learning, including study techniques, revision strategies, and attitudes.
Social and emotional journey
LANGUAGECERT Academic assesses the language functions students need to communicate, collaborate, and negotiate. Test takers must use the appropriate vocabulary, tone, and register for social and more formal academic interactions to agree, disagree, suggest, or request. The ability of test takers to listen and understand the detailed meaning of interactions, and discern the appropriate tone, register, and degree of formality is also assessed.
In the Speaking role-play task, the test taker is given a scenario they are likely to encounter in the real world of higher education. To choose the correct language to navigate the demands of the social dynamic, the test taker must understand and empathise with the roles. Just as we all do every day in real life, the test-taker must respond to the social roles and emotions of others.
International students' desire for fulfilling career opportunities motivates their many journeys. As they embark on their professional journey from academia into employment and the world of work, PeopleCert offers world-leading and industry-recognised qualifications for in-demand skills in project management, IT, and business. The combination of LANGUAGECERT Academic and PeopleCert qualifications opens the door to higher education, helps students through university, and puts graduates on a pathway to a world of professional opportunity.
My life experience, from being a wide-eyed teacher in Paris to working in assessment, has taught me the value of transferable skills. I may get to travel the world to speak at events, but it is helping students to develop the skills they need for their many journeys that motivates me.