The Problem of Anglicism in LE/L2 Language Certification

Abstract

In the world of Language Evaluation and Certification, it is necessary to reflect on the importance of foreignisms, in general, and Anglicism, in particular, because the appearance of English terms has gone from occupying a testimonial status to being part of everyday communication. It is a verifiable fact that, in many languages, terms taken from English appear very frequently in the media. In conversations between private individuals, too, there are terms that the speaker chooses from the English language, either because he or she does not know the term in Spanish, or because it is more profitable from a communicative point of view. Some of these Anglicisms are admitted by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, others are not, but, regardless of the RAE's prescription, their use is widespread. This phenomenon, as we have mentioned, is not exclusive to Spanish, since data have also been collected for subsequent studies which will show the attitude of the evaluator and the teacher in other languages. Given the circumstances, in these pages we consider what the teacher and the assessor should do when one of these terms is found in the text or expression of a student or candidate.

From our study we can conclude that learners, who in many cases have a multilingual profile, should be allowed to use their multilingual linguistic repertoires, as long as they coincide with expressions accepted by the RAE or by social usage. It will be the evaluator's own linguistic competence that ultimately validates the term.