Students who need a B1, B2, C1 or C2

[nigele2]

Hi all. Looking for any help on how to get a student a certification. My first ever student just passed a B2 here in Spain with the Escuela Oficial de Idioma. She needed it to get an Australian student visa.

I now have a second student who:

• needs B1 as part of her Spanish open University degree
• is above C1 and very close to C2 (from comparing her to other students and from various online tests).
• would like C2 so that she could teach English here in Spain (something I am against but c'est la vie).

However here in Spain it is not easy and not cheap (for many Spaniards). And I'm informed that the Spanish certificate as offered by her University would need to be for a specific level and, if she fails she gets nothing. Alternatives I am looking at are Cambridge and TOEFL.

So my questions:

Can any one point me to where I can get some information on all the offerings (e.g. can they be taken at any time, where, cost)? Or even a list of all the official and internationally accepted options.

The other difficulty is that she needs the B1 before June 2018. Clearly I do not want her to take a C2 and fail. But taking a B1 for bureaucratic reasons is a real waste of her money.

Hope that makes sense, but any help on the topic from those of you who have had to address this issue would be very welcome.

ps, The help offered here to my previous posts was much appreciated. And judging by the bottle of Cava my first student presented to me I think she would agree. :-D So, a big thanks to you all.

 

[Tdol]

Where are you in Spain? In major cities, they run exams like IELTS and TOEFL frequently, both of which carry international recognition and are not pass/fail.

 

[nigele2]

Tdol many thanks for your input. The student is located near Cadiz so Seville looks the best bet. I've looked at, as you suggested, both IELTS and TOEFL.

Obviously, I'll get her to check if both are acceptable to her UNI as she needs evidence of B1 level to get her degree.

Looking at the formats I think the IELTS Academic looks the best fit. The cost is 222 Euros plus 60 Euros train fares. She'll just have to find that.

Looking at the offered grading one sees C1 as an IELTS 7+ and a TOEFL 95+.

Sadly, I haven't found any general comparison sites so I guess I'll just have to work through the samples and get an impression of the differences. As a native speaker I hope I pass with flying colours :-D

 

[Tdol]

Here's the ETS grade comparison: https://www.ets.org/toefl/institutions/scores/compare/