Bad English

I posted a while ago about my cultural consumption of late. I was also intending to write about odd cultural things I'd directly experienced lately, but I've forgotten most of them.

One really weird thing I did recently though was to take an English proficiency test. You see, Colombia is trying to compile a database of people who speak English fluently. That way, if foreign investors come to check out the landscape, or companies need to hire English speakers, they can go right to the database and find a bunch of qualified people. I figured I'd take the test, ace it (it was, after all, in my native language), and maybe have some professional opportunities result from it.

I walked to the test location, which was in a big hotel and convention center oddly situated amidst seedy lowrises and a highway under construction cutting through the city center. There was a long line stretching from the basement entrance, up a double staircase to a spiritless corporate plaza, where we the line-keepers snaked ourselves back and forth in an impromptu way, trying to maintain order without taking the risk of losing our place in line. After maybe a half hour they started letting us into the building, and there we were subjected to a very efficient process of registration and finding a seat in the testing room.

For the next four hours we were in this room. We filled out a written test with grammar school-esque text analysis. That went well for me, except for a few questions where I believe they had made an editorial error by including multiple correct answers. There were also a series of listening sections. I had to choose from a list of three more or less non-sequitur responses to initial sentences. "I've got a terrible migraine". "A--No problem, let's go for a walk" "B--Did you want to go to the pharmacy?". I'd go for the walk, but I assumed that B was the correct answer. The worst was a part where you'd listen to some mook blather on about a new product launch or other boring corporate nonsense, then compare it to a writeup on the same new product, and analyze the different angle that the speaker took as opposed to the writeup. I had a hard time keeping track of if they were market-testing the preliminary version 2.3, or market-releasing the definitive version 3.2, or testing in the Philippines and releasing in Britain, or vice versa. It was a real bore.

At any rate, it was a surreal experience to be tested on my comprehension of my own native language. But once I'd left the obligatory 4 hour session (you couldn't leave early because you had to listen to all the recordings with everyone else), I didn't think about it much more.

Until a few weeks ago, when I received an email giving my results on the test. I got an 89 out of 100, which would give me a level of C1 in the European language rating system. C2 is the highest rating, for people who have almost a native level of speech. I couldn't believe it! I edit English writing for style, grammar, punctuation, syntax. I am one of the most deliberate, conscious, fluent speakers and readers of the language that I know. I read Robert Frost, Charles Dickens, even translated Dostoyevsky! How could I get that score? I'd have been disappointed to get that score in Spanish, which is not my native tongue but which I also write and edit for style and grammar.

Anyway, after a depressive, heartbroken night in which I despaired of my ability to ever get a legitimate, outside-hire job, I felt better about the whole thing. Sort of Zen-like. Apparently the official channels for getting credentials and jobs are not working. Any test, any world in which I might be considered a non-fluent speaker of the language I love and celebrate, is not valid for me. In other past occasions of rejection, on a job application to perhaps the World Bank or Catholic Relief Services, I had sincerely doubted as to my own capacity. But with this English test (administered by none other than Berlitz!) I knew I was in the right. I am a fluent speaker of my own language, so if the test says I'm not, it's the test that's wrong, and not me.

By the same token, I reflected that if the official development establishment seems not to want any part of me, it must be their flaw, and not my own. My case is bolstered by the ineffectiveness of many large development agencies and other large institutions (corporations, government bureaucracies, etc.), and by the fact that in the rare occasions I get to meet directly with knowledgeable people "within the establishment" (as I did on numerous occasions on my recent work trip to Peru), they treat me as a capable, knowledgeable person, the type of person they might like to hire if hiring weren't tied up in a horrendous, corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy.

Since my failure-turned-revelation, I've felt better about never being considered seriously by big companies or organizations in my job search attempts. It seems these institutions are destined for mediocrity, the kind of officialized mediocrity that can classify a fluent speaker of a language as a subpar speaker. Once again, God or the economic crisis is telling me (perhaps telling the world) that the official, big-company economy we grew accustomed to in the 20th century is on its way out the door. Most of us would probably be better off peddling ice cream in the streets or raising milk goats on vacant city lots as opposed to trying to get some corrupt, immoral corporate "person" to hire us and pay a living wage. Selling ice cream may not get you the prestige and respect of a big company job, but then again neither will being unemployed, waiting on your couch for the big company job to call you while ice cream selling opportunities pass you by right outside your window!