ARC NEW ZEALAND -
preparing overseas workers for the New Zealand workplace

You have the vacancies, and these people have the skills and the experience. But will they fit in? Do they understand how we work here? Will their level of English equip them to do the work you need them to do?

We understand the concerns that employers might have when they employ workers from overseas. ARC New Zealand has been set up to overcome these concerns.

We have two services which we believe will help:

1. Language Assessment

We ask you to tell us what level of English you feel your staff need to have. We have divided the skills that might be required into four categories: listening, speaking, reading and writing. For each of these, there are four levels of proficiency related to the workplace, and these range from 1 (high) to 4 (low). We quickly run through these and ask you to tell us what your requirements are for each one. It may well be that you need people to have, for example, quite high listening skills, although writing skills may not be required at all. Deciding what levels you require only takes about five minutes.

We then test the candidates. We can see whether their English meets your standards for your particular job. If it does, we will tell you. If it doesn’t, we will do our best to bring it up to the standard required. ARC New Zealand has evolved from language schools, and we offer courses of 6 and 12 weeks (or even longer) designed to bring candidates up to scratch. These courses include work-specific language. At the end of the course, we test the candidates again to ensure that they are ready to start work – and we give you our assessment.

What is special about this service is that it links language to the workplace.

The ARC New Zealand Language Assessment could also be useful for people who claim to be competent users of English, even native speakers. We will tell you whether they really are or not.

2. Seminars (seminars on work and life in New Zealand)

We understand that you want your staff to know how things work in New Zealand as soon as they start; you do not want to waste time telling them what the IRD is, that you’re not allowed to smoke in the workplace, and 101 other things that we take for granted. For this reason, we also offer a 10-hour, intensive orientation, held over a weekend. We cover areas such as: overview of employment in NZ; NZ working culture; health and safety; basic employment law; visas; taxation; accommodation; health and education; introduction to NZ history, geography and government; driving in NZ; Kiwi English.

The Seminars are designed for native speakers of English (e.g. workers from the UK) as well as non-native speakers.

We do not train workers in their particular skills or profession, nor do we assess their qualifications and experience. ARC is there to make sure that they have the English skills and the general knowledge of life and work in New Zealand which will enable them to cope. (We can also arrange homestay or apartment accommodation and airport pick-ups if required.)

Please contact your nearest ARC centre for more information, or send an e-mail to study@arcnewzealand.com

Our ARC centres in New Zealand, with the people to contact, are:

AUCKLAND ENGLISH ACADEMY	ROTORUA ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACADEMY
Contact: Barbara Takase Level 4 242 Queen Street Auckland Tel.: 64 9 379 3777 Fax: 64 9 358 3383 E-mail: learn@english.co.nz Website: www.english.co.nz	Contact: Chris Leckie 1460 Pukuatua Street PO Box 2079 Rotorua Tel.: 64 7 349 0473 Fax: 64 7 349 0753 E-mail: english@rela.co.nz Website: www.rela.co.nz