UN Level III: Advanced Language Competence

At every level of language competence, UN staff members are expected to function as social agents in a variety of multilingual and multicultural contexts and, as such, use existing plurilingual and pluricultural competences to further develop their linguistic and cultural repertoire(s), and to facilitate and promote successful communication and cooperation throughout the Organization.

UN Level III: Advanced Language Competence

Overall Descriptor

• Use the language efficiently, with a high degree of fluency and accuracy, in a variety of contexts and situations, when dealing with a wide variety of general matters in the personal, public and professional domains, throughout the Organization.
• Show a good command of a range of linguistic and pragmatic competences and of social language conventions to meet most communication needs.
• Respond autonomously and sufficiently to most required actions.
• Use reference resources to confirm and refine interpretation, and to improve communication

Reception Activities: Reading

• Understand most written texts of different genres and of different lengths, identifying essential information, the most relevant details, and the tone and the viewpoints expressed – both implicit and explicit.
• Understand most commonly used idiomatic and figurative language, and explicit sociocultural references.

Reception Activities: Listening

• Understand the general meaning and identify essential information, the most relevant details, and the attitudes and viewpoints expressed – both implicit and explicit – in texts delivered clearly at an average to fast rate, in standard varieties, and in moderately demanding contexts or noisy backgrounds.
• May occasionally require repetition of a word of a phrase.

Spoken Production and Interaction

• Take part naturally in a variety of interactions, arguing opinions and showing the ability to respond to different viewpoints.
• Produce clear and well-structured spoken texts of different lengths with appropriate detail.
• Relay and efficiently summarize the main information contained in an oral or written communication.

Written Production and Interaction

• Write clear and well-organized texts in different genres.
• In written exchanges, respond showing the ability to competently match register and style to the communicative situation.
• Relay and efficiently summarize the main information contained in an oral or written communication.