Direcció General de Política Lingüística

The Generalitat de Catalunya (the Government of Catalonia) has amongst the language policy objectives that of providing a system of testing and certification in the Catalan language by means of examinations.

This aspect of policy is implemented through two official bodies:

The General Directorate for Language Policy within Catalonia
The Institut Ramon Llull outside the Catalan-speaking area

Hence, two different certification bodies are recognized for the Catalan language and their respective competencies are defined, while conserving the unity of the system and establishing full equivalence between the certificates issued by one body or the other.

The General Directorate for Language Policy was created by the first democratically elected government of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 1980, as part of the Ministry of Culture. Its aims are to give impetus to the development of linguistic legislation and to monitor the implementation of linguistic policy. Within the Directorate there is a Linguistic Resources Department which is responsible for designing the certification system in the Catalan language, developing tests, organizing and managing official announcements, analyzing and evaluating the results, managing the certificates and taking care of its registration.

The Institut Ramon Llull is a consortium, the major member of which is the Generalitat de Catalunya, and its principal objective is the promotion abroad of Catalan language and Catalan culture. Through its Language Area, the Institut promotes the presence, study and teaching of the Catalan language and its present situation in universities and other learning centres around the world. The Institute is the body responsible for assessing and certificating students’ knowledge of Catalan as a second language outside the Catalan-speaking area. In order to achieve this aim it organises and administers Catalan language tests to accredit students’ level of learning and it regulates and issues certificates.

The examinations are (in order of increasing difficulty):

Certificat de nivell bàsic de català
Certificat de nivell elemental de català
Certificat de nivell intermedi de català
Certificat de nivell suficiència de català
Certificat de nivell superior de catal à

Examples of materials can be found at: http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/certificats/

The results are made public about 10 days after the date of the test and can be found on the Internet.

For further information please contact:
Servei de Recursos Lingüístics
Carrer de Mallorca, 272-274, 1a
08037 Barcelona
Tel 934 679 130
Fax 934 679 131
E-mail dgplsecava.cultura@gencat.cat

Institut Ramon Llull
Diputació, 279, pl. bxa.
08007 Barcelona
Tel + 34 93 467 80 00
Fax + 34 93 467 80 06
E-mail infollengua@llull.cat
WWW www.llull.cat