The Certificate of Spanish: Language and Use (in Spanish, CELU) is a certificate of competency in Spanish as a foreign language. It can be obtained by all foreigners whose first language is not Spanish, and who want to validate their skills to use this language as a second language in academic and work areas. CELU is the only exam which is officially recognized by the Argentine Ministry of Education and the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship.
Moreover, CELU allows non-Spanish speakers to study at university level and work in positions where an efficient use of Spanish is required. There are two levels to this exam, intermediate and advanced, and they certify, at different extents, the language skills of the foreign speaker to perform in work and academic contexts in any Spanish-speaking country.
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CELU - CERTIFICATE OF SPANISH: LANGUAGE AND USE
In October 2001, the Argentine Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs adopted the guidelines for the Spanish exam in our country. In June 2004, a consortium integrated by the National Universities of Buenos Aires (www.rec.uba.ar), Córdoba (www.unc.edu.ar) and Litoral (www.unl.edu.ar) was created with the aim of designing and implementing the first Argentine exam of Spanish as a foreign language.
By implementing these measures, the Argentine Ministry of Education, Science and Technology serves the needs of certifying the level of Spanish for foreigners who live in our country and for those people who study our language in their countries and who are interested in obtaining this certificate.
CELU or Certificate of Proficiency in Spanish assesses writing, oral and communicative competence of Spanish as a foreign language in everyday, family, social, work or academic contexts which involve speakers of another language without taking into account their mother tongues or their type of acquisition or learning.
CELU certifies three levels of language: basic, intermediate and advanced. In general, the basic level corresponds to a speaker who can communicate in a foreign country in simple, foreseeable, daily-life and tourism-related contexts. The intermediate level corresponds to a speaker who can communicate with certain fluency and spontaneity in familiar, social and service-related contexts. Also, the speaker can take university undergraduate courses. The speaker may have difficulties confronting unknown contexts or facing the need to explain or clarify their statements. The speaker with an advanced CELU level performs linguistically in a confident and spontaneous way in a wide variety of familiar and social situations, both in work and academic environments.
UNC CELU
School of Languages
National University of Córdoba
