My ELP exam was a precursor to doing the IR course and was mandatory.
At the time it could only be done at.the DGAC test centre at Orly.
The information on the DGAC was that this was a test of English comprehension, pronunciation etc but not a test.of aeronautical knowledge.
About 15 of us were put into little cubicles with computer and headset. First we had a briefing in French (as one might have expected) but it did put those from other countries at a disadvantage, including.one English guy.
AIRI the first part was a QCM. Twenty questions? written in French the answers to which could be found as English text amongst whole load of other stuff on the computer. It was a matter of scrolling through something that was a bit like the whole AIP in English. The questions were easy enough but scrolling through the text took time. Maybe less so if one had computer skills.
The time limit was 15minutes. I didn’t get to the last question.
IIRC the second test was ATC instructions (remember this was not an aviation knowledge test). One received an instruction from different ATCOs, some American, some Irish, a Scotsman, a Spaniard, and an Indian. They repeated the instruction twice and you had to fill in the gaps in a sheet of dialogue you had been given.
The third element was a fictional flight. Mine was a Boeing 747 from Washington DC to Milan.
After take off I was to imagine a CB in the way, during the SID and ask for avoidance measures.
Now to me USA waypoints on the SID are not at all like those in France. In France such airways interactions have names that you can say eg LUGEN, BAGAD. In the USA it can go WXXCD, difficult to pronounce and takes time to spell out. The other thing that I must have missed in the briefing was that somewhere on the computer was the SID chart to refer to these things and if you have that in front of you when being given directions to an intersection it makes life a little easier when they say direct to SXXCYD.
The last part of the test (I hope I haven’t missed anything) was a general chat.
“What do you call a bag that has gone missing?”
“Why does at the luggage have to be unloaded from an aircraft if a passenger doesn’t arrive at a departure gate?”
Remember many of us taking the test for the first time had not started the IR course yet and had never worked for an airline or at an airport in any capacity.
The end result was I got a level 5, I apparently didn’t know enough about commercial flying.
The poor English guy got a level 4. Funny, because his job before retirement was as a professor of English language at Oxford University. Who would have thought 😃?
What was even funnier was that in the group before use a whole lot of Air France and other airline captains came out all complaining, looking very stressed and muttering that they had been flying round the world for many years without problem. Most got a level 4. This was in the early days of the ELP introduction.
Fortunately, the ATO I go to for my revalidations had found Jim Bordeaux who is able to both run courses and do ELP tests and dispense a level 6 if merited. Thankfully, I now have a level 6 ELP through his company in a non onerous fashion and one which made a lot more sense as an English test.
So at that test, the first one, we were probably 10 candidates and there were 3 parts to the exam, the first one was listening to audio with the same text on a paper but the written version had missing words that you had to fill in according to what you heard. Most of this was fairly ok, except for 4 occurrences were the missing word in the audio recording were of such bad audio quality that you could only guess. Guessing according to the rest of the sentence gives you some chances, but since they wanted the exact word, it still was a once chance out of 5 to get it right, regardless of your level of English! There went my level 6 not lucky enough…
The second part, if I remember correctly was a longer audio recording, like an ATIS, and you had to answer some question on it (I think there was 3 or 4 of these longer audio). That was decent, although, again, audio recording does not seemed to be the best of DGAC’s ability, and it was not good audio quality so there again you are not only tested on your English but also on your Signal to Noise enhancement capabilities.
Last part was a simulated flight, you had a scenario given to you, a headset and you talked to the ATC which was actually and examiner. That part of the exam was, in my opinion, a quite nice setup. The only problem I had was that instead of requiring you to repeat only the important parts like you are supposed to when flying they wanted you to repeat everything the ATC told you. If you had some practice at flying in controlled airspace in English, which was my case, that meant you had to fight against your reflex to only repeat what you should and force yourself to repeat everything. That meant a few hesitation in my case, the examiner at the end told me that these hesitations meant that on this part also I was just below Level 6.
The second test was in Norway. I got told to contact a guy, I called him on the phone and he said I can come over to his house on the Saturday. compared to the DGAC setup, already a big difference. I arrived, and since I had a French license we discussed in Norwegian for a good amount of time to figure out the required paper work. Then we discussed in English about the flight I had done the week before, he asked me some questions and the had me listen to some audio recordings (much better quality than the DGAC ones…) with some questions. Since at that point I could only get level 6 from the DGAC, I got a level 5.
Last exam was a couple of years ago with AEPS. That was convenient because they can do it online, since it was in the middle of the pandemic, that was very good! The format of their exam is described on their website, so I won’t go in details. In short an aviation related discussion based on some pictures, they gave me level 6, so I think I’m good for a while now :-)
I’ve met so many non-UK pilots in person and on our Zoom evenings who would easily get a Level 6 – both in language comprehension and in pronunciation.
The biggest issue with ELP is what I’ve said before so many times: an “English” speech so heavily accented in language X that a Brit cannot understand it, is easily understood by a native of X (who has some basic English).
This is a particular problem in France, where – it has been posted openly by locals, although not here on EuroGA – for cultural reasons kids are encouraged to speak English with a heavy French accent, and ATC mostly do it too. I get this comment a lot on my flying videos where French airspace comms are audible.
@bordeaux_jim has said this too. It is a big issue for examiners who are usually “X natives” so they pass people who actually cannot speak intelligible English.
Hanski should probably get a Level 7 
Accents are very difficult to get rid of. It is not something one is taught.
Everyone has an accent and I knew several voice over artists who could pinpoint within a very small area where someone.came from because of their accent.
Depending on the radar sector you can try one of these :-)
That’s a hilarious video but IME almost nobody with any edukkation speaks most of those accents
The ATC ELP issue is a different thing. It is a “culturally mandated” lampooning of English, resulting in poor intelligibility while still enabling the speaker to get ELT4+ when examined by an examiner in the same country.
When I did mine, when ELP was first brought in, the process was as follows:
The examiner (mainly instructors who had been authorised to carry out the examination) used a PC which had two headset connected to it. One for me, one for the examiner. We did a fictitious flight with the examiner playing the role of ATC and me the pilot. I was to listen to the ATC, ask for startup, taxi etc. About 10 minutes after I leave the local area, I was to declare an emergency (it was left up to me what to declare, but I seem to remember a rough running engine was suggested) and set up a return to base. Shortly after, the exam was to be ended. It was all to be recorded on the PC for IAA evaluation and standardisation.
When the examiner was explaining the format, I asked with a wicked smile “When in flight, can I ask for the weather at my destination airport?!”. The examiner looked at me with evil eyes and with a quiet voice, just said “Please don’t.” I got the impression that the examiner was being examined as much as I was, in that the IAA wanted to make sure the tests were standardised.
To be honest I assumed I was going to get a level 6 and I’m sure the examiner assumed I was going to get a level 6 before doing the test (he had carried out some of my early PPL training a decade earlier so know I was a native speaker). We both were native speakers, so weren’t expecting much difficulty communicating. There were no recordings to listen to other than the ATIS.
The examiner did comment that he’d never give a level 6 to a non-native speaker because in his view, no matter how good your English is “now” if you go back to a country why you no longer use English it might quickly degrade. I felt that was somewhat unfair, but wasn’t going to argue as it wouldn’t affect me.
Having been stuck behind a TNT 737 at Exeter with an Chinese sounding pilot who could not understand ATC I can see the need to ELP. But the implementation seems to lack standardisation from country to country. Some people get level 6 when they clearly don’t deserve it, and some that clearly do deserve it, struggle to get level 4.
On accents, they are indeed an impediment to communication. Despite the fact that I can speak and understand just a small bit of French (just tourist level) I still struggle with French ATC (in English) for about the first 30 minutes. After that my brain adjusts and I no longer have a problem understanding them.
I do remember a number of years ago standing in a queue when my brother asked me “what language do you think those two men speaking?”. I listened and after a moment replied “I’ve no idea? They sound Indian or Pakistani to me”. My brother smiled and said “They are speaking English!”. With a bit of concentration I could start to make out some English words, but following the conversation would have been almost impossible. Yet for them, it was no problem in “English”.
I think you’ll find that many of them are dialects and not accents.
Peter wrote:
an “English” speech so heavily accented in language X that a Brit cannot understand it
IIRC, the official ICAO requirement is an accent that can be understood by “the international aviation community”. Which means a native English speaker may very well not fulfil this requirement. But indeed the USA/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ may not quite test that and issue ELP certifications to people that don’t fulfil this requirement.
ICAO doesn’t make regulations.
The intent for most European aviation regulation seems to be doing it ‘better’ than those who are already doing it better, and in general the self promoting regulatory philosophy is a detriment to progress.
