At the risk of drifting a little far from the original topic I wonder how many of you have read the ICAO criteria for English proficiency?
I've just looked at that (it was difficult to find on the ICAO site, so I ended up at an online dictionary
); I was somewhat horrified to find that at level 4 it's permissible to:
(1) Allow pronounciation structure to "sometimes interfere with ease of understanding"
(2) Have a grammatical structure which allows that "Errors may occur... but rarely interfere with meaning"
(3) And goes on to say things like "make limited use of discourse markers" and allow that "comprehension may be slower or require clarification strategies"
Several here have commented on the apparent ineffectiveness of the examination, and the crap 'Engrish wot is spoken' over the air, given the above I'm not surprised
Now, the bit that really concerns me is just how safe is it to have people flying around who may have 'interference' with their understanding, make errors in grammar, have limited discourse ability and slow comprehension?
And I think it has to be remembered that this allowance is seemingly as assessed from a test conducted on the ground in a (relatively) non-threatening situation with little else going on. How will someone perform such tasks when they're at 3000ft, slightly lost, with a bit of turbulence, just dropped their lunch and there's several other aircraft in the vicinity that are heading their way?
Seems rather haphazard, and hazardous, to allow such people to fly, yet they do... and then the powers that be get all hot and bothered over CVD?
FP.