The Chapel Hill Institute of Cultural and Language Education header

101 East Weaver Street, Suite G1
Carrboro, NC 27510
(3rd floor above Weaver Street Market)
Telephone: (919) 933-0398
Fax: (919) 933-1142
Email: chicle@chi-cle.com

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SPANISH PROFICIENCY ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Download SPAT brochure

Meeting
  • 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.

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.

Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.