What is a Language Audit?

As mentioned in my previous article, by launching this website and brand, I wanted to make a case for Language Management Consulting. Language Audit or Linguistic Audit is an integral part of this approach, so in this article, I will provide further information about what Language Audit is and how can your business benefit from it.

A linguistic or language audit is an investigation of the language needs of a particular organization, with the findings of the audit providing the basis of a report outlining what action the organization needs to undertake in order to increase the language competence of its employees and the use of content in foreign languages.

This type of audit aims to analyze a company’s foreign language needs and its primary objective is to help the management of a company identify the strengths and weaknesses of their organization in terms of communication in foreign languages. This is done by mapping the current language capabilities of departments, functions and people and by establishing foreign language needs at the strategic, process and individual postholder level, while determining the cost in time, human resources, training and finance to implement improvements in the above capabilities and needs.

This approach is implemented in the following stages:
Preliminary Stage: Initiating the Audit, defining the audit with senior management
Audit Stage 1: Integrating the Audit into the planning process
Audit Stage 2: Understanding the Organization: Foreign language communication at the Departmental Level
Audit Stage 3: Analysing postholders’ foreign language use and needs
Audit Stage 4: Assessing postholders’ foreign language skills
Audit Stage 5: Reporting back
 
Stay tuned for the next articles, where I will go through each of the above audit stages.
 

Sources:

Carreon, Edwina. (2005), A handbook on language auditing, Cor Koster (Ed.). Editions De Werelt, Amsterdam (2004)

Reeves, N. and Feely, A. (2001), 'Suspected Language Problems - Your Company needs a Language Check-up', Aston Business School Doctoral Working Paper, New Series 37

Reeves, N. and Wright C. (1996), Linguistic Auditing: A Guide to Identifying Foreign Language Communication Needs in Corporations. Great Britain: WBC Book Manufacturers Ltd.