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By being early adopters of the ����app English Express Test, US universities and institutions can ensure they remain competitive and attractive to a global pool of students. Students seeking to study in the US may prefer institutions that recognize this flexible and convenient testing option, which can enhance their overall application experience. This proactive approach can help universities stand out and draw in top international talent.

Whilst the ����app English Express Test can open doors to a wealth of opportunities for students eager to study in the US, early acceptance also provides significant advantages for the institutions themselves.

The ����app English Express Test is designed to be a convenient and accessible option for students worldwide. Unlike traditional tests that may require extensive travel, this test can be taken online, offering students the flexibility to complete it from their own homes. This is particularly beneficial for students in remote areas, far from a test centre or those juggling multiple commitments. By accepting the ����app English Express Test, US universities can cater to a broader range of applicants, ensuring they don't miss out on talented individuals who might otherwise be deterred by logistical challenges.

While tests like PTE Academic provide a comprehensive assessment of English proficiency, the ����app English Express Test serves as a valuable complement. It offers a quicker, more streamlined option for students who need to demonstrate their language skills promptly. By accepting both tests, US universities can offer a more flexible and inclusive admissions process.

For admissions teams, the inclusion of the ����app English Express Test can significantly enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The streamlined nature of the test means quick turnaround times for results, allowing admissions teams to make faster decisions. This agility can be a competitive advantage, positioning the university as a forward-thinking institution that prioritizes student needs. Additionally, by offering a convenient testing option, universities can attract a broader pool of applicants, leading to a more diverse and inclusive student body.

US universities should consider being among the first to accept the ����app English Express Test. This strategic move addresses diverse student needs, complements existing testing options, enhances the admissions process, and boosts institutional reputation.��

Adopting the ����app English Express Test is a forward-thinking decision that benefits both students and institutions, ensuring that US universities remain competitive in the global education landscape.

Kirsty Murray taught English for a year at a collège (the French equivalent of a secondary school) in Villers-Cotterêts: a town in the north of France known for being the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas. She taught mixed-ability groups of 11- to 16-year-olds, with classes ranging in size from 10 to 35 students. Here, she shares the five lessons she learned from the experience.

As English teachers, we’re usually the ones helping others grow. We guide learners through challenges, celebrate their progress and push them to reach new heights. But what about our own growth? How do we, as educators, continue to develop and refine our practice?

The Global Scale of English (GSE) is often seen as a tool for assessing students. However, in my experience, it can also be a powerful guide for teachers who want to become more intentional, reflective, and confident in their teaching. Here's how the GSE has helped me in my own journey as an English teacher and how it can support yours too.

About the GSE

The GSE is a proficiency scale developed by ����app. It measures English ability across four skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing – on a scale from 10 to 90. It’s aligned with the CEFR but offers more detailed learning objectives, which can be incredibly useful in diverse teaching contexts.

I first encountered the GSE while exploring ways to better personalize learning objectives in my Business English classes. As a teacher in a non-formal education setting in Indonesia, I often work with students who don’t fit neatly into one CEFR level. I needed something more precise, more flexible, and more connected to real classroom practice. That’s when the GSE became a turning point.

Reflecting on our teaching practice

The GSE helped me pause and reflect. I started reading through the learning objectives and asking myself important questions. Were my lessons really aligned with what learners at this level needed? Was I challenging them just enough or too much?

By using the GSE as a mirror, I began to see areas where I could improve. For example, I realized that, although I was confident teaching speaking skills, I wasn’t always giving enough attention to writing development. The GSE didn’t judge me. It simply showed me where I could grow.

Planning with purpose

One of the best things about the GSE is that it brings clarity to lesson planning. Instead of guessing whether an activity is suitable for a student’s level, I now check the GSE objectives. If I know a learner is at GSE 50 in speaking, I can design a role-play that matches that level of complexity. If another learner is at GSE 60, I can challenge them with more open-ended tasks.

Planning becomes easier and more purposeful. I don’t just create lessons, I design learning experiences that truly meet students where they are.

Collaborating with other teachers

The GSE has also become a shared language for collaboration. When I run workshops or peer mentoring sessions, I often invite teachers to explore the GSE Toolkit together. We look at learning objectives, discuss how they apply to our learners, and brainstorm ways to adapt materials.

These sessions are not just about theory: they’re energizing. Teachers leave with new ideas, renewed motivation and a clearer sense of how to bring their teaching to the next level.

Getting started with the GSE

If you’re curious about how to start using the GSE for your own growth, here are a few simple steps:

• Visit the GSE Teacher Toolkit and explore the learning objectives for the skills and levels you teach.
  
• Choose one or two objectives that resonate with you and reflect on whether your current lessons address them.
  
• Try adapting a familiar activity to better align with a specific GSE range.
  
• Use the GSE when planning peer observations or professional learning communities. It gives your discussions a clear focus.
  

Case study from my classroom

I once had a private Business English student preparing for a job interview. Her speaking skills were solid – around GSE 55 – but her writing was more limited, probably around GSE 45. Instead of giving her the same tasks across both skills, I personalized the lesson.

For speaking, we practiced mock interviews using complex questions. For writing, I supported her with guided sentence frames for email writing. By targeting her actual levels, not just a general CEFR level, she improved faster and felt more confident.

That experience reminded me that when we teach with clarity, learners respond with progress.

Challenges and solutions

Of course, using the GSE can feel overwhelming at first. There are many descriptors, and it can take time to get familiar with the scale. My advice is to start small: focus on one skill or one level. Also, use the Toolkit as a companion, not a checklist.

Another challenge is integrating the GSE into existing materials, and this is where technology can help. I often use AI tools like ChatGPT to adjust or rewrite tasks so they better match specific GSE levels. This saves time and makes differentiation easier.

Teachers deserve development too

Teaching is a lifelong journey. The GSE doesn’t just support our students, it also supports us. It helps us reflect, plan, and collaborate more meaningfully. Most of all, it reminds us that our growth as teachers is just as important as the progress of our learners.

If you’re looking for a simple, practical, and inspiring way to guide your professional development, give the GSE a try. It helped me grow, and I believe it can help you too.

Additional resources

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• ����app Languages GSE Blogs
  

Watching films can be a great way for people to learn English. We all have our favourite movie moments and, even as passive viewers, they're probably teaching you more than you realise. Here's a selection of our favourite scenes, along with the reasons why they're educational as well as entertaining.

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US institutions are always on the lookout for ways to enhance their admissions processes. One effective strategy is leveraging the Score Report Website for both PTE Academic and ����app English Express Test. This platform offers numerous benefits that can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of admissions teams.

Simplified score access and verification

The Score Report Website provides a centralized platform where admissions teams can easily access and verify test scores. This eliminates the need for paper-based score reports and reduces the risk of errors associated with manual data entry. By using this digital platform, institutions can quickly retrieve accurate and up-to-date test taker scores for both PTE Academic and ����app English Express Test, ensuring a smooth and reliable admissions process.

Enhanced security and accuracy

One of the key advantages of the Score Report Website is its robust security features. The platform uses secure login protocols to protect sensitive student data.��

����app’s score report website also ensures that scores cannot be tampered with, as they are sent directly through the system. This means the score that an institution sees, is the score that was awarded to a test taker. This level of security and accuracy builds trust with both students and institutions, making the admissions process more reliable.

Faster decision-making

The Score Report Website offers real-time access to test scores, allowing admissions teams to make quicker decisions. This is particularly beneficial during peak admissions periods when timely decisions are crucial. The platform's ability to provide instant access to scores means that institutions can respond promptly to applicants, enhancing the overall student experience.

Cost-effective and environmentally friendly

By embracing a digital score reporting system, institutions can reduce the costs associated with printing and mailing paper-based score reports. This not only saves money but also supports sustainability efforts by reducing paper waste. The Score Report Website aligns with the growing trend of digital transformation in higher education, promoting a more eco-friendly approach to admissions.

Improved communication with applicants

����app's Score Report Website allows institutions to share scores with multiple departments and stakeholders seamlessly. This facilitates better communication and collaboration within the admissions team.��

Trust ����app with your applicants

Using the Score Report Website to accept PTE Academic and ����app English Express Test applicants is a strategic move that positions your institution as a forward-thinking leader in higher education, committed to efficiency and security.��
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Why does progression seem to slow down as an English learner moves from beginner to more advanced skills?

The journey of learning English

When presenting at ELT conferences, I often ask the audience – typically teachers and school administrators – “When you left home today, to start your journey here, did you know where you were going?” The audience invariably responds with a laugh and says yes, of course. I then ask, “Did you know roughly when you would arrive at your destination?” Again the answer is, of course, yes. “But what about your students on their English learning journey? Can they say the same?” At this point, the laughter stops.

All too often English learners find themselves without a clear picture of the journey they are embarking on and the steps they will need to take to achieve their goals. We all share a fundamental need for orientation, and in a world of mobile phone GPS we take it for granted. Questions such as: Where am I? Where am I going? When will I get there? are answered instantly at the touch of a screen. If you’re driving along a motorway, you get a mileage sign every three miles.

When they stop appearing regularly we soon feel uneasy. How often do English language learners see mileage signs counting down to their learning goal? Do they even have a specific goal?

Am I there yet?

The key thing about GPS is that it’s very precise. You can see your start point, where you are heading and tell, to the mile or kilometer, how long your journey will be. You can also get an estimated time of arrival to the minute. As Mike Mayor mentioned in his post about what it means to be fluent, the same can’t be said for understanding and measuring English proficiency. For several decades, the ELL industry got by with the terms ‘beginner’, ‘elementary’, ‘pre-intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ – even though there was no definition of what they meant, where they started and where they ended.

The CEFR has become widely accepted as a measure of English proficiency, bringing an element of shared understanding of what it means to be at a particular level in English. However, the wide bands that make up the CEFR can result in a situation where learners start a course of study as B1 and, when they end the course, they are still within the B1 band. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their English skills haven’t improved – they might have developed substantially – but it’s just that the measurement system isn’t granular enough to pick up these improvements in proficiency.

So here’s the first weakness in our English language GPS and one that’s well on the way to being remedied with the Global Scale of English (GSE). Because the GSE measures proficiency on a 10-90 scale across each of the four skills, students using assessment tools reporting on the GSE are able to see incremental progress in their skills even within a CEFR level. So we have the map for an English language GPS to be able to track location and plot the journey to the end goal.

‘The intermediate plateau’

When it comes to pinpointing how long it’s going to take to reach that goal, we need to factor in the fact that the amount of effort it takes to improve your English increases as you become more proficient. Although the bands in the CEFR are approximately the same width, the law of diminishing returns means that the better your English is to begin with, the harder it is to make further progress – and the harder it is to feel that progress is being made.

That’s why many an English language-learning journey gets abandoned on the intermediate plateau. With no sense of progression or a tangible, achievable goal on the horizon, the learner can become disoriented and demoralised.

To draw another travel analogy, when you climb 100 meters up a mountain at 5,000 meters above sea level the effort required is greater than when you climb 100 meters of gentle slope down in the foothills. It’s exactly the same 100 meter distance, it’s just that those hundred 100 meters require progressively more effort the higher up you are, and the steeper the slope. So, how do we keep learners motivated as they pass through the intermediate plateau?

Education, effort and motivation

We have a number of tools available to keep learners on track as they start to experience the law of diminishing returns. We can show every bit of progress they are making using tools that capture incremental improvements in ability. We can also provide new content that challenges the learner in a way that’s realistic.

Setting unrealistic expectations and promising outcomes that aren’t deliverable is hugely demotivating for the learner. It also has a negative impact on teachers – it’s hard to feel job satisfaction when your students are feeling increasingly frustrated by their apparent lack of progress.

Big data is providing a growing bank of information. In the long term this will deliver a much more precise estimate of effort required to reach higher levels of proficiency, even down to a recommendation of the hours required to go from A to B and how those hours are best invested. That way, learners and teachers alike would be able to see where they are now, where they want to be and a path to get there. It’s a fully functioning English language learning GPS system, if you like.

It's 6 AM on a Monday morning. Ms. Lopez wakes up early to prepare for the day ahead. She spends the morning reviewing lesson plans, making sure everything is ready for her students. By lunchtime, she is preparing for the afternoon, grabbing a quick bite between classes... but it doesn’t stop there. The school day finishes but Ms. Lopez stays late marking assignments. Finally, on Sunday night, she sits at her kitchen table, surrounded by papers, course books and lesson plans.

Does this sound familiar? You are not alone.

The challenge teachers face

In 2024, ����app research found that��76% of teachers spend at least one hour of their personal time on lesson planning each week, with 43% spending more than three hours. This is a lot of time that could be spent on other important tasks. Teachers need a solution that helps them plan lessons fast, is connected to their course books and is built by learning experts.

As adult learners, our very motivation for learning English can sometimes hinder our progress because we are focusing too much on the end result. The informal way in which children learn English – through music, games and fun activities – offers an environment where they can learn and practise without worrying about the importance of it all. This relaxed attitude, in turn, gives them confidence in learning English and sets them up for more opportunities in their academic pursuits and future career options.

the positive impact bilingualism has on a child’s cognitive development. Catherine Ford, head teacher of Moreton First Prep School, says that children : “Before children become self-conscious they can try out their newly acquired languages without fear of embarrassment”.

Starting the English learning process at a young age will provide the head start that most parents are keen to give their children in life, education and career. More than 77% of parents who were interviewed as part of said they would consider sending their child to study at a university abroad, which involves studying in English.

Educational benefits

The number of students pursuing postgraduate studies overseas continues to rise, reflecting the global nature of education. According to the seeking diverse academic experiences and cultural immersion. One crucial factor in this journey is having the right level of English skills, especially when applying to universities in popular destinations such as the US, UK, and Australia.

Learning English from a young age provides a solid foundation, enabling students to tackle more complex language skills tailored to their academic goals. Traditional English teaching often emphasizes reading, writing, and grammar, but studying abroad offers a unique opportunity to immerse oneself in an English-speaking culture, enhancing speaking and listening skills.

Future career benefits

Mastering English at an early age can be a transformative asset for future career success. English is the lingua franca of business, opening doors to global opportunities and enabling individuals to pursue diverse career paths across borders. As the most widely used language in business worldwide, proficiency in English is a powerful motivator for students aspiring to join global companies.

Bilingualism is becoming increasingly advantageous in the job market, improving employability and making candidates more appealing to employers. , underscoring the competitive edge that language skills provide.

Empowering the next generation

The benefits your children are given by learning English at a young age are invaluable and as they go through life, the possibilities for advancement in their academic and business careers will be wide open. Children are fortunate to have intuitive language learning capabilities from a young age and this is certainly something to capitalize on.

Higher education is competitive and universities need to attract top talent from around the globe. One way to do this is by offering a range of secure, accurate and trusted proficiency tests. Adding the ����app English Express Test alongside PTE Academic can be a game-changer for both students and admissions teams.

Meeting diverse student needs

The ����app English Express Test is a convenient option for students facing time, location, or financial constraints. Unlike traditional tests, it can be taken online, allowing students to complete it from their own homes. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for students in remote areas, who are not close to a test centre.

Complementing PTE Academic

While PTE Academic is a truly comprehensive assessment, the ����app English Express Test offers a quicker, at-home option for prospective students.

Enhancing the admissions process

For admissions teams, the ����app English Express Test can enhance efficiency and effectiveness. By offering a convenient testing option, universities can attract a broader pool of applicants. The quick turnaround times for results also mean faster decision-making, reducing the waiting period for students.

Boosting business outcomes

From a business perspective, integrating the ����app English Express Test can help to increase enrolment numbers and revenue. The enhanced efficiency in the admissions process, through the use of ����app’s trusted Score Reporting Website, can reduce administrative costs and free up resources for other strategic initiatives.

Additionally, offering flexible testing options can enhance the university's appeal, making it more attractive to prospective students and their families.

What does this mean for you as an institution?

Adding the ����app English Express Test alongside PTE Academic is a strategic move that benefits both students and universities. It addresses diverse student needs, complements existing testing options, enhances the admissions process, and boosts business outcomes.

By embracing this approach, universities can attract top talent and position themselves as leaders in higher education in the US.