Babbel and Cambridge English launches online language test

Cambridge English has partnered with the maker of Babbel, the world’s top-grossing language app, to launch the Babbel English Test. This online language assessment, utilizing the expert knowledge and experience of the Cambridge English organisation, allows adult learners of English to assess their listening and reading skills online from level A1 (beginner) up to and including B1 (intermediate).

Test takers will earn a certificate of achievement, which can be downloaded and used to demonstrate English skills to potential employers, for self-assessment, when warming up for an exam, or to enhance an online career profile.

The Babbel English Test is available now as part of the Babbel back to work bundles for HK$554, and will be released as a standalone test in October 2017 at a cost of HK$366.

The Babbel English Test features a set of around 70 different questions per session, each testing a variety of listening and reading comprehension skills. Like Babbel’s lesson content, these tasks reflect authentic, real-life situations. These include, for example, images of posters and signs, listening tasks featuring recordings of speakers with different accents, as well as radio-broadcasts and real conversations.

The exam itself has hundreds of potential variations and will never be the same twice, no matter how often it is taken.

Founded in 2007, Babbel is the world’s number one language learning app with more than one million current paying subscribers. At the core of Babbel is an empirically proven method that empowers second language learners to speak confidently.

All learning content is tailored to the user’s native language and is based on authentic examples that can be put to immediate use. This makes Babbel the shortest path to a real-life conversation, with 73% of users believing they can have a short, simple conversation in their new language within five hours of using the app.

Go to www.cambridgeenglish.org/news/view/babbel-and-cambridge-english-set-the-pace-in-online-language-assessment/ to learn more.

Education Trends and Issues in the World Today

To teach effectively in the 21st century classroom, teachers need to be aware of opportunities to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create in the classroom.

One opportunity of particular importance for teaching and learning is employing digital skills to access and understand the Internet, where around 50% of the material is in English. Another opportunity lies in students using their own smartphone, tablet or laptop in the classroom to make learning more personal and engaging.

Trend 1: 21st century skills

Global Awareness: Teachers should use classroom activities to promote global understanding and raise cultural awareness. An example of this is creating classroom activities around Google’s Beyond the Map project, or using the international news stories and radio broadcasts of Voice of America in the classroom.

Creativity and Innovation: The 21st century classroom has a strong focus on students creating with the information they have in the classroom. Students can create portfolios that use the target language in context, such as creating videos, writing journals or producing podcasts.

Information and Media Literacy: It is important for students to understand how to access information and evaluate it, and so we should encourage the use of transmedia literacy, i.e. the ability to understand information from a variety of sources and make connections between them. For example, students can read an English-language news story and then watch a video on the same subject matter to see the differences and similarities.

Trend 2: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

A wide variety of digital tools exists for increasing classroom participation for students. These tools take advantage of the BYOD approach to encourage all students to ask and answer questions. By interacting through their own smartphone, tablet, or computer, students can all participate at the same time instead of one-by-one when they raise their hands to answer questions. The BYOD approach can also assist shy students by giving them a chance to ask and answer questions without having to speak to the entire class.

Go to https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-education-trends-and-issues-world-today to learn more

New tasks and assessment criteria for YLE

In January 2018, Cambridge will bring in changes to YLE to keep it relevant to the evolving needs of learners and schools; to incorporate evolving approaches to curriculum design and assessment for young learners; to address feedback from stakeholders; and to position YLE more closely with the Main Suite exams to create a clear language learning journey.

For the Listening, Part 1 of Starters will have the same task type as Part 1 of Movers and Flyers but targeted at pre-A1 level. Instead of placing objects on a picture, candidates will now identify people in the scene. To complete the task, candidates must look at a colourful picture of people doing different things, read the names, listen to a conversation about the people in the picture, identify a person and read the person’s name, then draw a line from a name to the correct person. For movers and flyers,

Cambridge has dropped the drawing in Part 5 because it caused anxiety. The Movers Part 3 will be similar to the Flyers Part 3 task.

For Reading and Writing at Movers level, the task order has been changed so that the easiest task is at beginning; the total number of questions is reduced from 40 to 35, and the current Part 2 has been removed and replaced with a new writing task – Part 6.

For Reading and Writing at Flyers level, the task order has been changed so that the easier tasks are at the beginning of the test and the current Part 2 has been removed to make way for a new writing task – Part 7.

For Speaking, there are more opportunities to speak at all levels. Starters are now asked their name. Movers will also be asked their age, and Flyers have to give their first and last name.

The Speaking assessment criteria has been widened and candidates are scored on a scale from 0 to 5. Starters candidates are not graded on grammar and cohesion in the Speaking assessment, but are expected to know word stress, though not intonation. Movers and Flyers are assessed using a full set of criteria.

For details, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYfzO9eWUus and watch the webinar.