In today’s interconnected world, effective communication in English is more crucial than ever. As educators and language learners seek to measure and improve English proficiency, a resource like the Global Scale of English (GSE) offers a valuable framework for assessment. This blog post will explore how the GSE can be used to assess listening skills, providing insights into how it also helps tailor instruction and support language development.
For listening skills, the GSE focuses on how well learners can understand spoken English in different contexts. It assesses comprehension at varying levels of complexity:
Understanding simple information: At lower levels, learners are expected to understand basic information, such as simple instructions or everyday topics. The GSE provides learning objectives for how well learners can grasp essential details.
Understanding main ideas: As proficiency grows, learners should be able to identify main ideas and key points in more complex spoken texts, such as conversations and broadcasts. The GSE outlines how well learners can extract important information from various sources.
Understanding detailed information: At advanced levels, learners are expected to comprehend detailed and nuanced information, including implicit meaning and speaker intent. The GSE describes the level of detail and depth of understanding required at these stages.
The GSE also shows how students engage in different operations of listening, from global comprehension, recognizing information and identifying specific information to extracting information. By taking this into account, teachers can monitor students’ progress and assess their listening skills. An example will show this in action.
Let’s consider a level, say GSE 30-35 (equivalent to low A2 on the CEFR) and focus on how students process information. When checking a listening activity, rather than simply focusing on whether the answers are correct or incorrect, we can analyze our learners using the GSE and see what progress they are making and what we need to do as teachers to help them move on. Heres how:
Learning objectives |
GSE |
Date 1 |
Date 2 |
Date 3 |
Date 4 |
Can understand basic information about someone when introduced to them using simple language. |
28 |
||||
Can recognize phrases and content words related to basic personal and family information. |
30 |
||||
Can identify simple information in a short video, provided that the visual supports this information and the delivery is slow and clear. |
30 |
||||
Can extract key factual information - prices, times and dates - from short clear, simple announcements. |
30 |
||||
Can identify basic factual information in short, simple dialogues or narratives on familiar everyday topics, if spoken slowly and clearly. |
32 |
||||
Can understand key information about arrangements in simple dialogues spoken slowly and clearly. |
32 |
||||
Can understand information related to people's daily routines. |
32 |
||||
Can understand the main information in short, simple dialogues about familiar activities, if spoken slowly and clearly. |
33 |
||||
Can identify key information from short audio recordings, if spoken slowly and clearly. |
33 |
||||
Can understand the main information in simple conversations about hobbies and interests. |
34 |
||||
Can extract key factual information such as prices, times and dates from a recorded phone message. |
35 |
||||
Can recognize some fixed expressions used to confirm information. |
35 |
||||
Can identify specific information in short, simple dialogues in which speakers make arrangements to do something, if spoken slowly and clearly. |
35 |
Every class will include a range of different abilities: some students get all of the questions right, whereas others may not. In this case, the GSE provides teachers with an extremely valuable tool to assess learners’ performance.
We may see that students are performing well at the understanding and recognition level but still find it hard to identify and extract specific information. Will we solve this by simply giving them more listening activities? Well, no. To support them in identifying and extracting specific information, we need to help them understand and identify clues in a text. Analyzing the written audioscripts is the best way to help learners understand what they are listening to.
We can also use the same table, above, to record information each time we do a listening activity.
Students write the date and compare results to the ones they fill out in the future. This way, they can truly see progress and if they’ve mastered a particular learning objective, something hard for them to see, even if we tell them so.
The Global Scale of English provides a structured and detailed approach to assessing speaking and listening skills. By using theGSE framework, teachers can offer precise, level-appropriate feedback and tailor their instruction to meet learners' needs. This not only enhances the learning experience but also ensures that learners effectively develop their English communication skills. Whether you're a teacher or a learner, embracing the GSE can lead to more targeted, effective, and meaningful language assessment.
Explore the teaching resources available at GSE to support learning, including tools like our .
Read our other posts 'How the GSE can help teachers personalize activities' and 'The Global Scale of English and planning'.
It's incredible to know that there are thousands of languages spoken across the world, each with its unique set of challenges for learners. A question that often pops up is: "Which language is the hardest to learn?". Today we take a closer look at this question and consider different factors that make learning a language challenging.
Preparing students for the modern world of work can be challenging; it's constantly adapting and changing which can be hard to keep track of. Today's post is a Q&A on the teaching of employability skills and the essential skills and qualities students need to thrive in the 21st century. offers insights to answer common questions and help you improve your language teaching skills.
My advice is to push the issue back to the students by putting them in groups and asking each group to identify a different job/career that involves people working with others. Then ask "What would happen if this job was competitiveinstead of collaborative?" You may have to re-explain the concepts, but let students write a little story about a situation in which the workers suddenly all turn competitive.
For example, It was chaos in the women's soccer/football game. All the members of the blue team suddenly became competitive. Each one still wanted to win, but each decided that she would shoot a ball into the other team's net. This included the goalie, who ran up to the front of the field and purposely shoved and tripped members of her team ….
Or for more traditional jobs, In the middle of the operation the nurse pushed the doctor out of the way and picked up the instrument. The patient also wasn’t completely asleep, and he tried to do the operation himself, then …
It's all absurd, of course, but it can lead into other tasks asking students why collaboration is so important in each job. Then, turning it back to language, what kinds of language does each profession require to collaborate? For soccer/football players, this includes shouted requests and commands:Pass the ball to me! Shoot!as well as hand and body gestures. Similarly, doctors require professional jargon:Pass me the scalpel, please.Rather thanGive me the pointy knife thing!
One hundred years ago, in 1923, Thomas Edison predicted that motion pictures would replace teachers and books. Since then, similar predictions have been made for radio, TV and computers. It hasn't happened, and one of the reasons is that we crave the human touch in our teaching and learning. I recently read. "When it comes to getting knowledge to stick, there may be no substitute for human relationships. … I've been to former students' weddings and baby showers and funerals of their parents," says Millard, the high school English teacher in Michigan. "I've hugged my students. I've high-fived my students. I've cried with my students. A computer will never do that. Ever, ever.”(Waxman, 2023, para. 21-22)
But, that doesn’t mean teachers should stop learning about new technologies. We need to keep finding ways for them to help us and our language learners in the classroom. It can seem overwhelming, though, which is why I recommend shifting responsibility to students: “Do any of you know about ChatGPT? Yes? How do you think you could use it to help you learn?”
Although the world is in many ways competitive, there are countless examples of how students will do better by collaborating. Most of our students today won't be working in environments where they are competing against their co-workers. Instead, they'll be in teams and need critical thinking and negotiation skills to help them do so.
One way forward is to ensure that your classroom features more collaborative activities. Get students working in pairs and groups on all their assignments, but also create a buddy system so students always have someone else to ask for help. For example, if they're having to read a text and come across difficulties, it's often easier for them to text or call a friend than to wait until the next class. After a few collaborative activities, discuss collaboration versus competition with students and ask them which they prefer. Also, ask them for examples of what their friends and family members do regarding collaborating and competing.
As always, it's better to lead students to understand a new idea than to tell them.
If you want to learn more, make sure to check out Ken's webinar here. If you'd like to learn more about teaching future skills to students check out21st-century skills and the English language classroom.
Ehsan Gorji is an Iranian teacher, teacher trainer and teacher educator. He also designs strategic plans, devises study syllabuses, runs quality-check observations, and develops materials and tests for different language institutes and schools in the country. Ehsan has been a GSE Thought Leader and Expert Rater since 2016.
Reflective teaching, despite it sounding modern and sophisticated, has not yet become a common practice among English language teachers. However, the experientialproposed byoffers a practical approach for teachers. The cycle involves teaching a lesson, reflecting on "what we did" and "how we did them," and then using that reflection to improve future English classes. By using this approach, teachers can prepare for better teaching in the long term.
