Ukrainian professionals level up their English

18% of staff for a large corporation in Ukraine improved their English by a whole level following bespoke 12 week study pathways created by Sensations English. The enterprise chose Sensations English as it’s a digital resource using real news stories and articles at 5 levels of English from A2 - C1. Students were able to test their level at the beginning of the process and again at the end. The benchmark for moving up was 75% overall across the activities and 18% reached that target.

Find out how we did it.

The challenge was how to support over 1100 learners spread across multiple locations in a country at war with minimal access to teachers and a wide range of existing levels of English and provide detailed reporting of their studies.?

First, we broke down the challenges to see where Sensations English was a good fit and where we might need to do further development or provide greater assistance.

Staff with different levels of English:

This we had covered.

Sensations English is flexible and easy to use:

• 5 level learning resources based on global news videos and articles,?
• progress supported by interactive activities and study tools,?
• focused on improving language skills, vocabulary and grammar.

All Sensations English lessons are available at 5 levels from A2 Elementary to C1 Advanced, allowing students to learn at a level and speed that is appropriate to them and to use multiple levels to support their needs in different areas of language and language skills.?

Staff spread across multiple locations:?

Again this was an easy one

Sensations English provides:

• a fully digital, remote learning resource,?
• access on desktop, mobile and app,?
• an anywhere, anytime learning solution.?

Minimal access to in-house teachers:?

Here we decided the staff would benefit from some additional support. A number of staff were also below the lowest level of A2, so we needed to motivate and guide them through to A2. The result was:?

• a series of bespoke, 12 week study pathways for all 5 levels: A2-C1,
• separate study pathways for listening, reading and writing skills integrating grammar and vocabulary,
• support and guidance for learners with a lower (A1) level of English.?

Rolling assessment and progress reporting:

Using reporting tools which we have recently expanded we were able to provide:

• on demand review of individual staff members’ engagement and achievement,
• reports summarising results for each user and for all users at each level of English,

To help sustain student motivation we also introduced:?

• certification for users with over 50% task completion,
• identification of users for promotion to a higher level of study.

After the first 12 week cycle, 75% of users had engaged with the learning resources.

Of these users, 18% achieved promotion to the next level of study – without any significant teacher intervention.

Following this success, the organisation’s staff are now studying on a second 12-week cycle of study pathways. We’re excited to see their progress at the end of week 24. With five levels of study and constantly refreshed content, Sensations English is looking forward to seeing this learning solution in operation over a number of years as learners progress to reach the level of English required for international communication in their highly technical professional roles.

We are now looking at building on this experience to work with companies in different sectors including hospitality, business, healthcare and communications.?