- Do you need to be sure that your employee is really understanding what your Spanish–speaking
client or customer is saying?
- Do you need to be sure that the information that your client is receiving is
spoken in a Spanish that they can understand?
- Do you want an objective way to assess the skills of your employees?
- Do you have special vocabulary that your Spanish-speaking employees need to know
and use?
CHICLE has developed a set of tools to help agencies and businesses assess the
Spanish language and cultural competency skills of their staff.
CHICLE developed
the Spanish Proficiency Assessment Tools (SPAT) in 2006 for a wide variety of
county employees, including health and social service workers, emergency responders,
dental providers, and general office workers. The tools provide an objective method
to determine the types of interactions that a staff person can comfortably participate
in. The tools are easily modifiable to suit other work situations, such as school
systems, non-profits, car dealers, hotel and restaurant staff, or any business or
agency that serves Spanish speakers.
If your organization is large enough, we can train one or more of your employees
to administer the assessment. If not, we can contract with you to do the assessments,
either in person or by phone.
SPAT contains a general assessment of speaking and listening ability. If
the person passes that assessment, an additional assessment related to the actual
work of the employee is administered. These more advanced assessments are based on
dialogues that will be developed with input from your organization.
SPAT also contains an assessment of cultural competency that can be administered
to any employee, as well as assessments of writing and translation skills for fluent
Spanish speakers.
Assessment Categories: Your employees will be placed in one of four groups.
- Group 1 are those whose Spanish isn’t really good enough to be used in their
job. They may have listening and/or speaking problems.
- Group 2 employees can communicate minimally with your clients or customers. They
can ask that they wait until another employee comes to talk with them, they can
give simple instructions and greetings and make your Spanish speaking clients feel
welcome.
- Group 3 members are classified as adequate or proficient. They can provide many
services but are neither fluent nor bilingual.
- Group 4 contains those who are either bilingual native speakers or English speakers
who are fluent in Spanish. They understand idiomatic Spanish that is spoken
quickly. Only Group 4 members are assessed for writing and translation skill level.
It is important to recognize that many fluent or native speakers do not write or
translate well.
Our 20-question assessment of Cultural Competency is mainly a series of True-False
questions like: Hispanic is a racial category like Caucasian or Asian or When working
with Latinos, you can assume that they are observant Catholics.
Please call us at (919) 933-0398 or e-mail
us if you want more information. |
