Networking from CEPE. The Association of the International Certification System for Spanish as a Foreign Language

Dr. Érik Huesca finds four significant pathways for the human species over the millennia: water, transportation, energy, and connectivity. History could almost be written based on these four major courses, through which, in the end, all of us flow.

Economies, societies, politics, and cultures make use of these paths. From there, networks emerge, as we seem to have an ages-old impulse towards expansion and connecting the dots. These dots may be human beings, institutions, companies, political groups, or financial centers. And networks stimulate the coming and going of all possible materialities and even intangibles such as values and principles, narratives and projects, ideas, and ultimately all those messages that end up shaping our lives.

Network is a connecting word itself. Rivers form networks due to nature and, above all, due to human efforts. The energies are channeled through lines that multiply the effects as they generate new energies. Transportation is energetic and fluid. And digital, cybernetic, and electronic connections have become so vital that they are the typical example of a network.

According to experts, contemporary universities depend on two factors: since they cannot grow indefinitely, they must have solid infrastructures and establish links with other institutions to help each other fulfill their respective tasks.

Entities of our National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) search or consolidate national and foreign networks daily.

CEPE IS A FOUNDING MEMBER OF SICELE, A NETWORK OF 37 HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

THE SICELE ASSOCIATION
Let’s look at an example of the networks established by UNAM’s Teaching Center for Foreigners (CEPE). Since 2017, CEPE has been part of the Association of the International Certification System for Spanish as a Foreign Language (SICELE), which forms a network of 37 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Hispanic-America and the Cervantes Institute. The SICELE seal is granted to those certification systems that provide evidence of their compliance with the quality standards established by the system itself.

SICELE has undergone two main stages: the initial phase as a Multilateral Framework Agreement between Hispanic-American HEIs, and then as a legally established association of institutions.

The initiative to create an international certification system arose at the III International Congress of the Spanish Language held in Rosario, Argentina, in November 2004. In October 2005, during the Rector’s Conference in Salamanca, Spain, an agreement was reached to create an international certification system for Spanish as a foreign language, and an Academic Commission was created, comprised of representatives from the participating countries.

In March 2007, as a preamble to the IV International Congress of the Spanish Language, held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, rectors and representatives of more than a hundred universities from Spanish-speaking countries ratified the constitution of SICELE before the President of the Republic of Colombia and the King of Spain, in Medellin.

On June 2, 2010, in Guadalajara, Mexico, the SICELE Multilateral Framework Agreement was signed, consolidating it as an international association, but yet without legal personality.

So, it emerges as a network of higher education organizations in Spanish-speaking countries, committed to harmonizing, making transparent, and giving coherence to the mutual recognition of Spanish language proficiency through a quality assurance system for products or services related to Spanish as a foreign language, following international standards in the area, to grant the SICELE quality mark to certification systems.

Cervantes Institute played a very important role in shaping SICELE, given its desire to promote a pan-Hispanic vision of Spanish and its recognition of the multi-normative nature of the language. The main achievements of this process are:

Linguistic framework
It is a declaration of principles and intent on how SICELE conceives the Spanish language, its diffusion across the world, and the treatment of the linguistic varieties of Spanish in teaching and evaluation activities.

SICELE Conferences
These are biannual research and innovation academic spaces on Spanish as a foreign language. The first was held in 2012 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the second in Mexico City in 2014, the third in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, in 2016, the fourth in Rosario, Argentina, in 2018, the fifth in Salamanca, Spain, in 2021, and the sixth in Valparaíso, Chile, in 2023.

SICELE Standards Matrix
This is the basis for the evaluation process of certification systems and is integrated by quality standards that define good practices in language certification systems. It has four sections:

1. Exam’s elaboration and development process.
2. Exam’s tests management and administration system.
3. Evaluation and analysis of results.
4. Information to users.

SICELE Quality Evaluation and Certification Process
It has three stages and organizes the review of the evidence for evaluation and certification:

1. Application and submission of documentation by the applicant institution.
2. Evaluation.
3. Communication of results.

Glossary
It includes a set of terms to clarify doubts about technical concepts.

SICELE is then an example of a global network that yields extraordinary benefits to the university through CEPE, as it assures our certification tools. We can say that SICELE certifies our certifications.

In October 2022, CEPE launched the Diagnosis of Written Expression (DEES), an instrument that contributes to a better confidence in mastering the written language system. We aim to have SICELE certify it as soon as possible. And this is a very concrete example of the benefits of belonging to a certified international network.

CONSOLIDATION: A LEGALLY STABLISHED ASSOCIATION
We will now take a quick look at the expansion of SICELE as an Association. SICELE is a clear example of what we were saying: there is a natural tendency to expand networks by connecting more and more dots.

At its November 2016 General Assembly in Alcalá de Henares, SICELE approved its institutionalization as a non-profit association under Spanish law. Several reasons led to change from an agreement to an association. The most important was that SICELE required a legal structure that would allow it to manage its services, establish fees, generate invoices, and make payments. In October 2017, SICELE obtained the legal form of a non-profit association and established the following objectives:

• Increase the importance of Spanish language worldwide, fostering the interest to learn it among students.
• Satisfy students’ need to have their knowledge assessed through quality language certification services.
• Promote an international harmonization of criteria for the certification of the knowledge of Spanish as a foreign or second language through establishing international cooperation and coordination mechanisms.
• Develop and implement procedures and tools to verify the quality of certification assessment systems.
• Guarantee the transnational recognition of language proficiency certificates bearing the SICELE seal.
• Develop cooperation programs to train Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE) teachers.
• Implement collaboration systems, especially for the development of research projects, for the transfer of knowledge and applied technologies, and for the dissemination of the activities of the SICELE Association.

The association has four collegiate bodies: an Assembly as its supreme governing body, a Council as its management body, an Academic Commission, and an Executive Secretariat. Through CEPE, UNAM participates in the first three of them. Our university was a determining factor in the birth of the association and, as a founding institution, is a permanent member of its Council.

Currently the association comprises 38 institutions from six countries: 25 from Spain, four from Mexico, four from Colombia, two from Argentina, two from Chile y one from Peru.

And two evaluation processes of certification systems for Spanish as a foreign language have been carried out to grant the SICELE seal: The International Evaluation Service of the Spanish Language (SIELE), both in presential and remote modalities (one exam), and the Spanish as a foreign Language Diploma (DELE) developed by Cervantes Institute (eight exams).

As the previous information shows, SIELE itself represents a network created by four institutions of the highest level in the Hispanic world. It was inaugurated in a formal sitting in July 2015. It has grown as an on-site exam application and remote application support center network and has become the most important for Spanish language proficiency certification.

Interaction between both SIELE and SICELE networks supports and strengthens each other with verified and certified actions.

SIELE will continue to expand as a network as more application centers are opened around the world, due to the work of the four founding institutions and the support of the foreign chancelleries and embassies of the three countries: Mexico (UNAM), Spain (Cervantes Institute and University of Salamanca), and Argentina (National University of Buenos Aires).

The SICELE association is open to all Hispanic-American institutions interested and involved with Spanish language. More Information about SICELE and membership requirements can be found at https://asociacionsicele.org.

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