SDEA - Instructions for candidates

Santos-Dumont English Assessment (SDEA) is the exam developed by the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) to verify pilots’ level of proficiency in English, according to the provisions of Annex 1 of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and RBAC 61. Following ICAO’s recommendations, SDEA assesses candidates’ ability to speak and understand the English language within work-related contexts. These include routine, unexpected and emergency situations, all of which appropriate to the operational context, which allow candidates to demonstrate their ability to interact efficiently and safely in radiotelephony communications using the English language. Thus, topics presented in all parts of the examination are related to civil aviation , and many  occur in the context of radiotelephony and standard air traffic phraseology. It is important to emphasize that the candidate’s oral production is not assessed in terms of its technical or operational precision, since the exam aims at verifying only the candidate’s proficiency in English. ICAO rating and the holistic descriptors are the basis for assessing the candidate's performance. The scale details six areas of linguistic production: pronunciation, structure, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and interactions. For each of these areas, the rater awards the candidate a level, from level one (pre-elementary) to level five (advanced). The final level is determined by the lowest rating assigned in any of the six language proficiency skills of the rating scale. In order to be authorized to perform international flights, the pilot must obtain at least final level four - Operational. The complete result, detailing the level reached by the pilot in each evaluated area, is sent to the candidate via e-mail by ANAC, in up to 30 working days after the exam.

PART 1 -Aviation Topics
In the first part of the test, "Aviation Topics", candidates respond to general questions related to aviation, their professional experience and daily activities as a pilot. One of the goals of this part of the test is to make candidates feel comfortable during the exam, by creating a favourable atmosphere in which they can demonstrate their knowledge of the language, although these responses are also evaluated. For this reason, they should be appropriate and informative. Candidates are expected to take approximately 1 (one) minute to answer each question.

PART 2 - Interacting as a Pilot
In the second part of the test, "Interacting as a Pilot", the candidate interacts with the air traffic control by playing the role of the pilot of a twin-engine aircraft. Its call sign is ANAC 123. Five different radiotelephony communication situations are presented. Each situation consists of two audios. The candidate can listen to each recording twice. If a candidate wants the audio to be repeated, he/she needs to request this repetition, as the pilot of that flight. In each situation, which may be predictable or unexpected, the candidate must act as in a role-play - that is, playing the role of the pilot of that flight and interacting appropriately with the controller, by confirming or clarifying misunderstandings as if he/she were in a real situation. The same way a pilot is allowed to take notes while in the cockpit, the candidate is allowed to take notes while listening to the audios. All information must be reported. At the end of each situation in part 2, after interacting with the controller, the candidate is asked to retell what the controller said. The purpose of Part Two is to assess  candidates’ comprehension skill and to evaluate their ability to interact as a pilot in a radiotelephony communication within predictable and unexpected situations (voice-only interactions), and also to verify if he/she deals adequately with apparent misunderstandings, by checking, confirming or clarifying. In three situations, a situational complication is orally presented to the candidate. In two situations, this is presented to the candidate through a photo.

PART 3 - Unexpected Situations
In the third part of the exam, "Unexpected Situations", the candidate listens to three different unexpected situations, presented through recordings of radiotelephony dialogues between a pilot and a controller. In this part of the test, taking notes is also allowed. Each situation is automatically played twice, with a 5-second pause between them. The candidate must then report all the information given by the pilot and controller in his own words, and respond to a question proposed by the examiner. At the end of Part 3, the candidate should talk about the situation he/she believes to be the most difficult to deal with and compare them in terms of severity, possible solutions, and ways of prevention. The purpose of this part is not only to assess the candidate's ability to identify and understand real emergency situations or situational complications presented through recordings (non-visual channel), but also to interact with the examiner face-to-face by reporting what he/she understood and to make the transition from standardized phraseology to plain English. In addition, questions proposed by the examiner in part 3 give the candidate the opportunity to expand their responses further and to demonstrate their language proficiency.

Part 4 – Picture Description and Discussion
In the fourth part of the test, "Picture Description and Discussion", the candidate describes a photo and answers questions related to the photo and its subject. The candidate should make inferences and evaluations, raise hypotheses, develop an argument, and compare the consequences of past, present and future events. In all versions of the test, a statement related to aviation is presented, and the candidate must state to what extent he/she agrees with it, justifying his/her opinion with arguments and examples. The purpose of this part of the test is to assess the candidate's ability to hold conversations, express opinions about aviation-related topics and justify them. Checking candidates’ ability to develop high standard work-related dialogues in a satisfactory way by using plain English is a crucial aspect of this part of the test.

Introduction
To communicate effectively in spoken language, the pronunciation of the interlocutors needs to be intelligible. Broadly speaking, the "Pronunciation" skill in the ICAO rating scale requires it to be assessed whether the segmental features of pronunciation (segmental phonology), as well as the intensity, rhythm and intonation (suprasegmental or prosodic phonology) are influenced by the first language or regional variation, and how often they interfere with ease of understanding. Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation of a level 4 candidate, for example, "are influenced by the first language or regional variation, but only sometimes interfere with ease of understanding." The pronunciation of a level 6 candidate, although possibly influenced by the first language or regional variation, "almost never interferes with ease of understanding." However, the aspects of pronunciation that lead to a more or less intelligible spoken text are still not very well known. Some aspects considered important in order to make this distinction include, among others, the correct use of tone, intonation, accent and rhythm while speaking. The Manual on the Implementation of ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements (DOC 9835) lists some cases, such as: long/short vowel length distinctions (e.g. hit/heat); the correct placing of nuclear stress (e.g. radar); the marking of tone boundaries (i.e. significant changes in voice pitch or the direction of intonation which identify new components of a message); and the avoidance or reduction of some consonant clusters (e.g. the cluster “st fl” linking the two words of “test flight” may be reduced in rapid speech to “tes’ flight”).

List
Acess the list to practice the pronunciation of the main words that are mispronounced by candidates when taking SDEA. Click on the link after the word and then click on the American flag audio icon to listen to the American pronunciation, and on the UK flag audio icon to listen to the British pronunciation (icons are reproduced below).