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 English Skills on February 9 as part of their efforts to implement English as the language of international communication in Ukraine. The programme aims to improve English proficiency among Ukrainians, encourage the use of the language in the country, and make it a second common language of communication in Ukraine.
The National Ecosystem for Studying and Testing English Skills is a free resource accessible to all Ukrainians, which aims to provide systematic training to secondary educational institutions, first-year students, and all participants in the educational process. The programme has three stages, namely the determination of English level, offers on the English learning services market, and studying English using the largest online Ukrainian educational project called Lingva.Skills.
The adaptive testing feature allows users to determine their level of English proficiency, track their progress and return to testing at any time. Users can also select a service for studying by using the marketplace or by choosing Lingva.Skills, which has been running for over six years, and over that time, Ukrainians have done 180 million exercises on the platform. In 2019, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) included Lingva.Skills in the top 10 social startups of Eastern European countries. The platform was also officially entered into the National Book of Records in 2022 as Ukraine’s largest online education project.
The Deputy Head of the Association of Innovative and Digital Education, Vitalii Zubkov, a psycholinguist and polyglot with over 20 years of experience teaching foreign languages, explained that the program’s goal is to provide systematic training, especially for teachers of secondary educational institutions and first-year students, in all parts of the country, and eventually expand to other educational institutions.
The National Ecosystem for Studying and Testing English Skills is part of a larger program that aims to improve English proficiency, make the language more widely used in Ukraine, and turn it into a second common language of communication, as in other European countries. Ukrainians can access the free resource at any time and benefit from its adaptive testing feature, which helps track progress and determine the level of English proficiency.
