Talk to a person who is considering emigrating or studying abroad and ask them to point out one required step in the entire screening process that they would like to skip. Most of them will no doubt answer that they prefer to escape the IELTS test if possible. This is because the IELTS test not only adds additional costs to their immigration procedure, but also requires them to spend a lot of time preparing for the test. When immigrating to certain destinations and under some specific programs, such as Australia's General Migration Program, the immigration programs require both the main applicant and their spouse to also appear for the IELTS test. While this makes the immigration process more expensive and difficult, applicants do not realize that the IELTS test is only for their benefit. Read on and find out how?
Is it unfair?
There are applicants who excel in their field of specialization and find it unfair that the decision on their immigration application depends not only on their professional excellence, but also on their language skills. This is based on the observation that others who may not have reached the same level of professional excellence as them, but are fluent in English, easily get the immigration visa.
Students planning to study abroad have the same concerns. In their view, their grades at their school or college level should be the deciding factor in choosing a course and university, and IELTS puts them at a disadvantage compared to others with better language skills.
Importance of IELTS test
So why has the IELTS test become such an integral part of immigration applications for almost all immigration destinations and programs? And why do the applicants have to go through the strenuous IELTS preparation process and spend huge amounts of money on undergoing these tests? More importantly, what we need to think about is why options are not provided to applicants who cannot qualify through this test?
Earlier system for assessing English proficiency
The reason is that English language proficiency has always been an important selection criterion in the points system from the very beginning. In the past, the immigration officers took a one-on-one interview to assess the applicant's English language skills and decide how many points to award to the applicant.
But this kind of system created animosity and unfair situations both for the visa processing agency and immigration applicants. There are several reasons why this system of assessment of applicants' language skills is being replaced by the IELTS test.
Firstly, delays in immigration processing were huge as the visa officers have to conduct all interviews on an individual basis to make the decision on each of the applicants. Seen in the context of queues of thousands of applicants, this meant years of additional processing delays. Second, this made the language proficiency assessment highly subjective as it was based on the understanding of the visa officer conducting the interview.
Conducting such one-to-one interviews failed to test the immigrant applicant in all key areas of language skills, including understanding, reading, speaking, and listening.
Introducing IELTS
There was therefore a need for an objective test that was internationally acceptable, standardized benchmark and assessment tool. Standardization was very important to provide equal opportunities for all applicants. Thus, IELTS became an integral part of the immigration process and applications, especially for skilled professionals, independent immigration, general skilled migrants and in some cases also green card visa applications. The IELTS test is based on evaluating the applicant's skills in all four components of the language, including speaking, listening, understanding and reading.
IELTS is therefore also becoming an important requirement for students who choose to study abroad to most popular destinations such as Canada, Australia, UK, USA and New Zealand. Language is clearly an important area that can and will lead to difficult situations, especially when applicants do not have English as their primary language and have never encountered international language accents.
For students who are not very fluent in the language, it can literally become a nightmare when they end up in a course and university where they don't understand the instructions and can't communicate with teachers and the rest of the age group. Add to that the costs of staying away from home and expensive education abroad.
The IELTS test therefore gives all these immigrants the chance to avoid such difficult situations and check their language proficiency level before choosing the course and university to study abroad. Most international educational institutions offer language development courses for international students who do not have a good command of the language. The students can take such foundation courses and language development courses first for a certain period of time and then they are admitted to the course of their choice.
Thus, the IELTS test is an objective English language assessment tool that is internationally accepted by both government and immigration education institutions. It has therefore become an essential part of the immigration visa process and for studying foreign applicants. Therefore, an applicant is advised to prepare well if he wants to earn points by scoring well in different test modules. Seeking advice from an immigration expert is a wise decision to give direction to your IELTS preparation and your immigration process in general.
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