Visa Immigration To Canada For Skilled and Unskilled Workers
Is Your Level of English Enough For Canada Immigration?
This post is designed to test your knowledge of English for Canadian immigration. In this article, you will find out if you can take the English exams accepted for Canadian immigration. At the end of the article, you will find out if you are ready to take the immigration English exam.English and French are the two official languages of Canada. To have the chance to emigrate to Canada, you must be able to communicate effectively in one of the two languages. Different levels of English proficiency are required for different migrant flows. If you are applying for immigration to Canada through the trade program, the language requirement is not as high as the Federal qualified worker program. English and English English are required for the qualified immigrants (Quick Entry) program, whereas CLB 5 (English) and CLB 4 (English) are required for the speech and listening requirements for writing and reading.
Exam: check your English level for Canadian immigration.
If you don't know, CLB is a benchmark for language proficiency in Canada and stands for the Canadian Language Benchmark. I will tell you in detail every level of comparison and what it means. For example, the first level useful for immigration is “less than high Foundation” and corresponds to CLB 3. The following list will also show what you need to score in IELTS to pass the comparison.
CHECK IF YOUR LEVEL OF ENGLISH IS ENOUGH FOR CANADA IMMIGRATION?
It is also important to note that each language skill (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) has its own different benchmark. For example, a score of 7.5 in speaking is CLB 10 (the highest) while the same score in Listening is CLB 8 (high intermediate).
CHECK THE IELTS SCORES AND THEIR CORRESPONDING CLBS
In the chart below, you will see all the IELTS scores possible and their CLBs. If you are applying for Canadian immigration, you will also see how many points it adds to your CRS in the image that follows the chart.
| CLB Level | Reading | Writing | Listening | Speaking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 8.5 | 7.5 |
| 9 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 7.0 |
| 8 | 6.5 | 6.5 | 7.5 | 6.5 |
| 7 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 |
| 6 | 5.0 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.5 |
| 5 | 4.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| 4 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 4.0 |
If you are immigrating with your family as a skilled worker, you are the one that needs to score high in the IELTS exam. Your spouse (secondary applicant) does not need to score that high. If you don’t want your spouse to take the IELTS, it reduces the marks you get for language. You will see everything in the chart below.
The implication of the chart above is that, for the Federal Skilled Workers scheme, you need to score Reading – 7, Writing – 7, Speaking – 7, and Listening – 8. These are all CLB 9.
For the Federal Trade scheme, you need to score at least 5.0 in the IELTS Speaking and Listening, 5.0 in Writing, and 4.0 in Reading (all CLB 5 English).
It is essential to know that I am only using IELTS as an example. It is only one of the two testing bodies designated by the IRCC for language proficiency tests. Apart from IELTS, the other one is known as CELPIP (Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program).
To help you, we have created a sample quiz that can help check your level of proficiency in the English language. You can click the link below to test yourself.
Finally, I believe that these tests of English, especially listening and reading are more of a test of your ability to listen and read to understand than they are of the English language. If you are able to listen and read carefully and understand, you should be able to ace these aspects of the test.