Medically speaking ... on the road of harmonizing a Hungarian LSP proficiency exam with CEF levels
Dr. Gábor Rébék Nagy

A linguistically landlocked country like Hungary is forced to encourage developing Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) exams, which are difficult although not impossible to turn into profit-making enterprises, but they undoubtedly offer the advantage of guiding LSP learning through their backwash. PROFEX is such an accredited LSP proficiency exam developed in the University Medical School of Pécs in the year 2000 for medical students, physicians and other health care providers who wish to maximize the professional benefit from Hungary being a member state of the EU. The year 2006 will be crucial in the history of Hungarian accredited language exams whose levels of proficiency will have to be harmonized with those recommended in the Common European Framework (CEF) by law. The CEF, however, seems to be rather laconic in extending its recommendations to LSP. What can be the reason for this phenomenon? How can information implicated in CEF be made more explicit? How does professional background knowledge influence the identification of proficiency levels? What kind of procedures for validating these levels can be used in this special situation? These are but a few of those questions that arise when discussing the process of harmonization of PROFEX with the European requirements.