A UQ team has successfully obtained a Telstra Broadband Fund grant to develop a revolutionary English as a Second Language (ESL) system.
With the help of UniQuest, UQ’s technology commercialisation company, the project was chosen as a recipient of the Telstra scheme that offers grants of up to $250,000.
The grant will facilitate the development of the EASY – English online system that allows students to rapidly improve and monitor their language skills through regular, simple and highly benchmarked learning assessments.
The UniQuest Innovation and Commercial Development Manager for the Faculty of Arts David Israel said the proposed system differed from other ESL testing programs.
“It will work in real-time and will measure the speed that students access knowledge, not simply their reflective or stored knowledge,” Mr Israel said.
“The Telstra grant provides the funding to undertake the research and development necessary to build the system.”
EASY – English is an innovative, cross-faculty collaboration between staff in the School of English Media and Art History (EMSAH) and the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE).
Project team member Dr Michael Harrington said the system consisted of a set of tests designed to assess the proficiency of the speaker and produce a set of standards by which students could be assessed.
“The program assesses key subskills, including word recognition and grammar mastery, that determine overall proficiency, and the testing format allows us to develop usage-based norms for these subskills,” Dr. Harrington said.
Users of the English assessment system can be anywhere in the world as long as they have access to the internet. EASY – English will make use of innovative speech technology to teach and test English proficiency in a natural spoken environment.
Mr Israel highlighted the commercial potential for the EASY – English technology.
“It has been designed to fill a gap in the marketplace of ESL teaching and learning. We expect to begin commercialisation of the initial product within a year,” he said.
“There is currently no online, independently benchmarked system that uses speech and response timing as a key proficiency measure.
“EASY – English will have global reach, will provide independent student evaluation, and will be certified by UQ based on the large pool of comparative data the system will hold.”
The team includes the creators of the original concept, Dr Michael Harrington and Dr John Ingram of EMSAH, and ITEE’s Professor Joachim Diederich and Dr Mark Pedersen. Prior to Telstra’s funding, a text-based pilot system had been under active development supported by an internal UQ Research, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (RIEF) grant given to Dr Harrington and Dr Ingram.
Media: For more information, contact David Israel (telephone 07 3365 3072, mobile, 0409 524 203, email: d.israel@uq.edu.au) or Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 3367, email: c.saxby@uq.edu.au).
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