̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - English Language Teaching

Cambridge provides English learning platform for Ukraine

sb726 — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 15:50:10 +0000

It is part of the new Future Perfect programme – initiated by the President of Ukraine and being launched by the Ukrainian government – which aims to make English the official language of international communication in Ukraine and open up new professional and personal opportunities for Ukrainians.

̽��ֱ��organisations combined their expertise following a request for help from the Ukrainian government to support Ukraine’s education sector and enhance foreign language learning for both teachers and students, many of whom have been displaced by the war.

As well as helping Ukraine grow international relationships and enable Ukrainians to make better use of other support they have received from the international community since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Future Perfect programme aims to contribute to the rebuilding of the economy after the war.

Thousands of college and university students are among the adult and young adult learners who Ukraine hopes will benefit from the English language learning platform, the first project under the umbrella of Future Perfect and based on Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment’s Empower course which provides a mix of engaging classroom materials and online learning.

Cambridge is committed to doing all it can to assist teachers and learners in Ukraine, making its educational excellence available to colleges and universities, and enabling students to continue their studies despite the unprecedented challenges Russia’s illegal invasion has created.

Professor Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for ̽��ֱ�� Community and Engagement at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� – as part of its Help for Ukraine package of educational support – acted as soon as the Ukrainian government asked for support with English language learning, drawing on expertise from across our departments.

“Key to creating a platform for such a specific audience, learning in such challenging circumstances, was the technical skills of teams within the academic ̽��ֱ��, and the knowledge and experience of colleagues at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment. They have produced in months a resource that would normally take years to deliver.”

̽��ֱ��first-of-its kind project saw Cambridge teams – in partnership with e-learning experts Catalyst IT – combine academic expertise from the ̽��ֱ��, and curriculum expertise from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment to create the online platform and provide learning course materials.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will host the platform on its cloud infrastructure. By using AWS Cloud, the platform will have the ability to dynamically scale to meet future demand for the course, enabling the course content to be available to users anytime from anywhere, all delivered from a highly secure environment. Leveraging the cloud means innovation can be a continuous cycle, ensuring the platform can accommodate future technology developments.

Cambridge will support the launch of the platform – which is being supplied free of charge - before it is handed over to the Digital Ministry of Ukraine.

Fran Woodward, Global Managing Director for English at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment, said: “Future Perfect reflects a great ambition for Ukrainian education. This will open doors for Ukrainians who want to improve their English language skills, and will support new global economic opportunities. We are delighted to support English language education in Ukraine and we wish Ukrainian teachers and students every success.”

Valeriya Ionan, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for European Integration, said: “ ̽��ֱ��full-scale invasion re-emphasizes the importance of developing the skills of our people, and the value of inclusive education. We believe in the transformative power of education to facilitate the skills that can reduce the unemployment rate as English language proficiency is directly correlated to GDP. ̽��ֱ��Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine expresses gratitude to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and Amazon Web Services along with Catalyst IT as the technology leaders for the strategic support”.

Dmytro Zavgorodnii, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, for digital development, digital transformations and digitalization, said: “Speaking English multiplies opportunities for literally every citizen in Ukraine. For some, it is a chance to find a dream job and for others it is a tool to connect with people or events around the world. Regardless of your future or current occupation, English is essential. Thanks to Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, Amazon Web Service and Catalyst IT, we now have a well-timed approach to develop our population’s skills”.

Joey Murison, Managing Director of Catalyst IT, said: “It has been our pleasure to support this great initiative for the students of Ukraine. Our expertise as world leaders in the maintenance and management of online learning platforms for the higher education sector has enabled us to deliver the platform in record time. We look forward to providing our ongoing support now and into the future for the benefit of the students of Ukraine."

Liam Maxwell, Director, Government Transformation, at Amazon Web Services said: “We’re pleased to collaborate on this initiative that will give Ukrainians the opportunity to enhance their English language skills. Building the Empower platform on the cloud will give the Ukrainian Government the flexibility to dynamically scale the environment to meet the demand for the course, and enables the content to be made available remotely and securely to students. We look forward to seeing the course launch, and hope it has a positive impact on the professional growth of the Ukrainian students who take part.”

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Help for Ukraine

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Help for Ukraine is a developing package of support announced by the ̽��ֱ�� last year. It has also created fully funded residential placements in a wide range of subjects for students and academics, clinical placements for medical students, and help for academics still working in Ukraine.

About Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment supports millions of English language learners worldwide, working with tens of thousands of organisations in more than 130 countries and territories. Last year it was announced that other English language teaching and learning resources were being made available at no cost as part of Cambridge’s support for the Ukrainian education sector.

People in Ukraine will be able to improve their English using an online learning platform specially developed by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in collaboration with Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment, and technology companies Amazon Web Services and Catalyst IT.

Two students using online learning platform on laptop.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Improving support for pupils with English as an additional language

ta385 — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:45:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��report identifies opportunities to target outreach to parents of EAL pupils, and develop frameworks and qualifications for English language support specialists to enable better assessment of language proficiency among pupils.

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, were commissioned by the Bell Foundation to conduct a two-year longitudinal study of secondary schools in the East of England between 2013 and 2015.

̽��ֱ��project, which took a new cross-disciplinary approach and linked quantitative and qualitative methods, involved a regional survey of 46 secondary schools as well as tracking the progress of 22 newly-arrived EAL students at two case study schools over a two year period and interviewing dozens of teachers, parents and carers.

Diana Sutton, Director of the Bell Foundation, said:

‘Crude headlines which assert that EAL children either outperform others or are a drain on scarce school resources miss the point. ̽��ֱ��picture is mixed, complex and nuanced, as this and previous research shows.’

̽��ֱ��new research highlights the benefits which such children receive from growing up in mixed-language social groups, and gives an impression of the pace at which they start to feel a sense of belonging as well as academic achievement.

But the survey found that EAL support was uneven across different schools. While some have qualified EAL coordinators managing schoolwide support, others have teaching assistants covering the role, and some have an already overstretched subject teacher subbing in.

Key recommendations in the report include:

‘EAL coordinators’ within schools should be part of a national framework of support specialists for children for whom English is an additional language

Michael Evans, Reader in Education at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, said:

‘There is a need to develop high quality, Masters level accredited training for the EAL co-ordinator role, akin to the requirements for the new Special Education Needs co-ordinators. ̽��ֱ��role of the EAL Coordinator should be professionalised. Networks could be established and guidelines developed and shared to raise the status of EAL support, and the prominence of those who coordinate it within individual schools, as well as the wider system.’

A model of accountability should be established, similar to Pupil Premium support for those eligible for free school meals, in which resource from the national budget is contingent on pupil progress

̽��ֱ��report warns that there is a lack of accurate information on linguistic proficiency, which can mask EAL pupils’ academic potential. While pupils within the study developed functional oral proficiency within a year, many continued to struggle to use appropriate “academic” English.

Currently, recorded data gives no indication of an EAL pupils’ proficiency and funding is for three years only, after which there is no additional support, regardless of the pupil's proficiency in English. By contrast, in the US, assessment continues and pupils only exit the EAL status once proficiency is achieved.

Embedding EAL training in teacher training programmes, and including EAL inductions as part of the school orientation for newly qualified teachers

In interviews, the researchers found that the parents of EAL students cared considerably about the social and academic progress of their child. However, they also observed that school staff often use very limited definitions of parental engagement, such as attendance of parents’ evenings. Many parents of EAL pupils had little understanding of the school system, leaving them lacking confidence and fearful of engaging, along with barriers of language. This can lead to assumptions about parents that are ‘unlikely to represent actual level of interest’.

Encouraging parental involvement

Claudia Schneider, Principal Lecturer in Social Policy at Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, said:

‘Schools should take advantage of the opportunities offered by high levels of parental interest, by developing information and communication strategies which reflect an ‘outreach mentality’.’

‘Targeted strategies for encouraging community and parental networks could, for example, offer bilingual support by sharing translations of routine school information. Parents of EAL are significantly underrepresented in school structures, and such cost-effective networks could help integrate this untapped resource.’

̽��ֱ��report’s authors have created a template through which newly-arrived families could be encouraged to get involved by presenting on their country of origin. They also highlight simple technological aids such as embedded widgets on school websites that allow for translated information when clicked on.

̽��ֱ��report contains forewords by the Vice Chancellors of both Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge who both have a migration background and highlight the importance of migration for Higher Education.

Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, himself the child of Polish immigrants, wrote:

‘[T]he report underlines the need for a holistic approach to EAL children’s experience, involving parents as well as schools. It calls for evidence‐based approaches to the teaching of EAL students, for greater consistency in the assessment of their progression, and for a review of testing that may put them at a disadvantage.’

̽��ֱ��new research builds on the Bell Foundation’s 2014 report on school approaches to the education of EAL students.

Download the Executive Summary of the 2016 report.

Download the Full Report.

A new report on UK school pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL) argues that their progression in English language proficiency, academic achievement and social integration is closely linked and that a strong professional knowledge base is needed in schools to support the pupils. ̽��ֱ��authors also argue that parents are an ‘untapped resource’ for support and social integration. ̽��ֱ��report makes a series of policy recommendations.

̽��ֱ��report underlines the need for a holistic approach to EAL children’s experience, involving parents as well as schools

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

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Computer tutor

lw355 — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 10:21:39 +0000

“We arrived to our destination and we looked each other.”

To a native English speaker, the mistakes in this sentence are clear. But someone learning English would need a teacher to point them out, explain the correct use of prepositions and check later that they have improved. All of which takes time.

Now imagine the learner was able to submit a few paragraphs of text online and, in a matter of seconds, receive an accurate grade, sentence-by-sentence feedback on its linguistic quality and useful suggestions for improvement.

This is Cambridge English Write & Improve – an online learning system, or ‘computer tutor’, to help English language learners – and it’s built on information from almost 65 million words gathered over a 20-year period from tests taken by real exam candidates speaking 148 different languages living in 217 different countries or territories.

Built by Professor Ted Briscoe’s team in Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, it’s an example of a new kind of tool that uses natural language processing and machine learning to assess and give guidance on text it has never seen before, and to do this indistinguishably from a human examiner.

“About a billion people worldwide are studying English as a further language, with a projected peak in 2050 of about two billion,” says Briscoe. “There are 300 million people actively preparing for English exams at any one time. All of them will need multiple tests during this learning process.”

Language testing affects the lives of millions of people every year; a successful test result could open the door to jobs, further education and even countries.

But marking tests and giving individual feedback is one of the most time-consuming tasks that a teacher can face. Automating the process makes sense, says Dr Nick Saville, Director of Research and Validation at Cambridge Assessment.

“Humans are good teachers because they show understanding of people’s problems, but machines are good at dealing with routine things and large amounts of data, seeing patterns, and giving feedback that the teacher or the learner can use. These tools can free up the teacher’s time to focus on actual teaching.”

Cambridge Assessment, a not-for-profit part of the ̽��ֱ��, produces and marks English language tests taken by over five million people each year. Two years ago, they teamed up with Briscoe’s team and Professor Mark Gales in the Department of Engineering and Dr Paula Buttery in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics to launch the Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA) Institute, directed by Briscoe. Their aim is to create tools to support learners of both written and spoken English.

Underpinning Write & Improve is information gleaned from a vast dataset of quality-scored text – the Cambridge Learner Corpus. Built by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press and Cambridge Assessment, this is the world’s largest collection of exam papers taken by English language learners around the world.

Each test has been transcribed and information gathered about the learner’s age, language and grade achieved. Crucially, all errors (grammar, spelling, misuse, word sequences, and so on) have been annotated so that a computer can process the natural language used by the learner.

Write & Improve works by supervised machine learning – having learnt from the Corpus of errors, it can make inferences about new unannotated data. Since its launch as a beta version in March 2014, the program has attracted over 20,000 repeat users. And each new piece of text it receives continues this process of learning and improving its accuracy, which is already running at almost equal to the most experienced human markers.

Briscoe believes that this sort of technology has the potential to change the landscape of teaching and assessment practices: “Textbooks are rapidly morphing into courseware where people can test their understanding as they go along. This fits with pedagogical frameworks in which the emphasis is on individual profiling of students and giving them tailored advice on what they can most usefully move onto next.”

He regards the set-up of ALTA as the “best type” of technology transfer: “We do applied research and have a pipeline for transferring this to products. But that pipeline also produces data that feeds back into research.”

̽��ֱ��complex algorithms that underpin Write & Improve are being further developed and customised by iLexIR, a company Briscoe and others set up to convert university research into practical applications; and a new company, English Language iTutoring, has been created to deliver Write & Improve and similar web-based products via the cloud and to capture the data that will feed back into the R&D effort to improve the tutoring products.

Now, the researchers are looking beyond text to speech. Assessing spoken English brings a set of very different challenges to assessing written English. ̽��ֱ��technology needs to be able to cope with the complexities of the human voice: the rhythm, stress and intonation of speech, the uhms and ahhs, the pauses.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that you can get speech recognition on your phone tends to imply in some people’s minds that speech recognition is solved,” says Gales, Professor of Information Engineering. “But the technology still struggles with second language speech. We need to be able to assess the richness in people’s spoken responses, including whether it’s the correct expression of emotion or the development of an argument.” Gales is developing new forms of machine learning, again using databases of examples of spoken English.

“ ̽��ֱ��data-driven approach is the only way to create tools like these,” adds Briscoe. “Building automated tests that use multiple choice is easy. ̽��ֱ��stuff we are doing is messy, and it’s ever- changing. We’ve shown that if you train a system to this year’s exam on data from 10 years ago the system is less accurate than if you train it on data from last year.”

This is why, says Briscoe, it’s unimaginable to reach a point where the machines have learned enough to understand and predict almost all of the typical mistakes learners make: “Language is a moving target. English is constantly being globalised; vocabulary changes; grammar evolves; and methods of assessment change as progress in pedagogy happen. I don’t think there will ever be a point when we can say ‘we are done now’.”

Inset image: Professor Ted Briscoe ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

Millions of English language tests are taken each year by non-native English speakers. Researchers at Cambridge’s ALTA Institute are building ‘computer tutors’ to help learners prepare for the exam that could change their lives.

Humans are good teachers because they show understanding of people’s problems, but machines are good at dealing with large amounts of data, seeing patterns, and giving feedback

Nick Saville, Cambridge Assessment

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