Language accreditation opens new doors for SDSU
CALEXICO — In April, when San Diego State University became the only university in the United States to receive a prestigous language accreditation from the Ministry of Education in Mexico, it was due to an online system of testing teachers’ English language proficiency developed by an SDSU Imperial Valley team led by Suzanna Fuentes.
Fuentes, director of Professional Skills Development Center at SDSU-IV, said Mexico’s Ministry of Education created the National Language Level Certification (CENNI) to standardize and test teachers’ proficiency because of the high priority the country puts on developing English language skills in its K-12 schools.
The electronic assessment developed by Fuentes and her team measures grammar, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing and speaking.
She said it took about seven years to develop the assessment tool because the process was so complex.
She credited Liliana Vizcarra on her staff with being the point person for developing the assessment test.
“We had to develop an assessment instrument that complied with standards set by the ministry and also (an international language standard) that Mexico follows,” Fuentes said. “We had to go through so many committees. We would meet, come back and work some more and go back and meet again.”
She added the platform developed for the SDSU assessment is very sophisticated, which added to the complexity and length of time it took to complete the project.
While it is mandatory for K-12 teachers in Mexico to take a CENNI assessment, relatively few universities are accredited for their assessments. With its accreditation, SDSU joins the ranks of Cambridge University, Oxford and a number of universities in Mexico as having approved language proficiency assessment tools.
SDSU-IV Dean Gregorio Ponce said the accreditation “will open even more doors to establish partnerships with more educational agencies in the Secretariat of Education in Mexico to promote academic enrichment for students and teachers. This is a great accomplishment.”
Fuentes said working with so many committees in Mexico City has opened many doors for the university. “The accreditation is the beginning of a lot of binational possibilities.”