Language Proficiency and Communication
Language Proficiency and Communication tests your control of both working languages as a communicator, not only as a grammarian. Expect items on register, cohesion, collocation, implicature and paraphrase, plus error-spotting tasks where a rendering is grammatical but communicates the wrong stance or emphasis.
Register and the given–new contract
Register runs from frozen (treaties, statutes) through formal, consultative and casual. Signals include lexical density, nominalisation, modal choice and pronoun strategy. Formal English often prefers nominalisation and passive voice; other languages may prefer active verbs and overt politeness particles. Readers also expect given information early and new information late - the given–new contract. Reordering inside a sentence is legitimate; breaking the contract across a paragraph derails the reader.
Cohesion versus coherence
Cohesion is surface linking: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical chains. Coherence is the reader's sense that the text holds together. A translation can be cohesive yet incoherent if the logic is reversed for the target audience - for example, presenting a concession before the claim it concedes in a genre that expects the opposite order.
Worked example
Source: “We regret to inform you that your application has not been successful.” A word-for-word rendering may sound either cold or overdramatic. Reasoning: the function is refusal plus a politeness hedge; the register is formal, written, institutional. Identify the formula the target genre expects for refusals, then choose wording that preserves three things - the refusal, the regret, and the institutional distance. Do not import “we regret” literally if the target genre uses a different apology formula.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing cognates by shape rather than meaning.
- Flattening or inflating register.
- Transferring source punctuation and capitalisation habits.
- Deleting implicature because it is not stated explicitly.