On February 9, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Association of Innovative and Digital Education presented the National Ecosystem for studying and testing the level of English language proficiency for Ukrainians, as part of the Roadmap for the introduction of English as the language of international communication in Ukraine.
“Our Ministry, together with colleagues from other departments, people’s deputies, and the public, developed a draft law on the functioning of English as the language of international communication. Actually, we will talk about this draft of law itself separately, because it is a separate event. The general goal of this program and this law is to increase the level of knowledge of the English language, to make it more widely used in Ukraine and, in fact, a second normal language of communication, as it is in other European countries. Today, we are happy to make a teaser of a large program in which the Ministry of Education and Science participated, regarding the application, which is also a marketplace, in order to more easily participate in studying, testing the level of knowledge of the English language”, said Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
The National Ecosystem for studying and testing the level of English language proficiency is a free resource available 24/7 to all Ukrainians.
“Our task is to organize systematic training, first of all, for teachers of secondary educational institutions and students from the first grade in secondary educational institutions throughout the country, and later in other educational institutions for all participants in the educational process,” said Oleg Yeresko, Director of the Directorate preschool, school, extracurricular and inclusive education of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
The Ecosystem consists of three steps:
• determining the level of English language proficiency,
• marketplace of the English language studying services,
• mastering the English language with the help of the largest online educational project of Ukraine “Lingva.Skills”.
“We have developed an adaptive testing system that will accurately and quickly determine the level of English language proficiency, which does not limit the number of attempts so that a person can return to the test during his studies and be able to constantly monitor his own progress,” says the deputy head of the Association of Innovative and Digital Education, psycholinguist and polyglot, who has been successfully teaching five foreign languages for more than 20 years, Vitalii Zubkov: “The next stage of the Ecosystem is choosing a service for studying. This can be done with the help of the marketplace or choose “Lingva.Skills”, on the portal where Ukrainians have already completed more than 180 million exercises in 6 years. In 2019, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) included this Project in the TOP-10 social startups of Eastern European countries, and in 2022 “Lingva.Skills” was officially entered the National Book of Records as the most massive online educational project of Ukraine.”
“Currently, no one needs to prove the practical importance of the English language proficiency. The Ministry of Education and Science concentrates its efforts on teacher training. Because a teacher who knows English at a high level will be able to transfer this knowledge to his students. That is why we are developing courses to raise the level of teachers first of all,” said Yevhen Bazhenkov, Director of the Institute of Modernization of the Content of Education of the DNU.
The draft Law of Ukraine “On the Functioning of the English language as the language of international communication in Ukraine” can be found here.
