How much is enough? Involving occupational experts in setting standards on a specific-purpose language test for health professionals

Abstract

This paper considers how to establish the minimum required level of professionally relevant oral communication ability in the medium of English for health practitioners with English as an additional language (EAL) to gain admission to practice in jurisdictions where English is the dominant language. A theoretical concern is the construct of clinical communicative competence and its separability (or not) from other aspects of professional competence, while a methodological question examines the technical difficulty of determining a defensible minimum standard. The paper reports on a standard-setting study to set a minimum standard of professionally relevant oral competence for three health pr..