We Have Global Approach To Teaching English: British Council Experts

Shiksha spoke with Duncan Wilson, Managing Director, BC Education India and Mina Patel, Head of Research, Future of English. They gave insight into how the English assessment is changing in India and abroad.

British Council recently organized the flagship conference New Directions South Asia 2025 in New Delhi. During the conference, Shiksha conversed with Mina Patel, Head of Research, Future of English and Duncan Wilson, Managing Director, BC Education India. Read the insightful interview with these two experts here.

Q:  Tell us about the evolving landscape of the English assessment in India. Because a lot of changes are happening.

A: Duncan: I think in India, like the rest of the world, English assessment is changing. It's particularly driven by technology and post-COVID, which is the way that society uses technology and we're finding a lot more online assessment. We're finding a lot more AI-driven assessment. It brings assessment to more people more quickly, more easily.

Mina: I think another driver for the evolving landscape of assessment, not just in India but the region and the world, is employment. Employment drives a lot of English language learning around the world. Globally and in India, a lot of employers do their own assessments in-house when they want to recruit.

Q: How British Council integrate AI and online platforms in English Teaching?

A: Duncan: So, we have English online and AI is a whole idea of personalised learning and personalised journeys and one of the things that the British Council is working towards is that kind of personalised learning journey that leads to the kind of assessment, the adaptive assessment, the individual one.

Q:  IELTS exam is one of the most recognised exams globally. So, how does the British Council ensure its fairness and reliability?

A: Duncan: The reason it has gained the prestige and the value that it has is because it's so rigorously developed and so very carefully tested itself. There are many, many versions for all the tasks. For example, let's take writing, for example, the writing test. There are many, many versions of the writing test and every version is piloted tested and sampled on real learners before it is released into become a live exam.

So, they're all properly regulated and ensure that they meet the right standards and that when the assessment is done on them, it is an accurate assessment. So, I think a lot of investment in different versions of the test helps to ensure that it is a very reliable and accurate test for the levels that it's trying to test and then with that, you have to have very high security on the test, very, very strong security of the materials, of identification of the learner.

At the moment, IELTS is mainly still a traditional. It could be computer-based, but it's in a lab in testing conditions or it's paper-based in paper conditions. But I think AI will come into IELTS more eventually. It will have to come to develop the test further.

Mina:  From a research perspective, about IELTS's validation, quite a lot of money on an annual basis is invested in research on the validity of IELTS. So, I think researchers all over the world, all three partners invest in that research and that research then informs any changes, any developments.

Q: How would you describe the role of British Council in promoting English language globally?

A:  Duncan: I can say straight away the British Council exists to develop relationships and connections between Britain and the countries it works in all over the world and in our core mission, our core object is English and the promotion of the English language is one of the core missions. What we do is because Britain has a long history of English language teaching, it has developed a kind of expertise, a specialism and a sector expertise in IELTS that is probably one of the strongest in the world.

So, our understanding of teaching methodology, textbooks and materials, and assessments like IELTS, Britain is particularly strong in those areas. At the British Council, our role is to ensure that around the world people have access to the highest quality education.

Mina:  We're present in about 90 countries in the world and in over 90 years we've built up relationships with ministries of education, with institutions, with organisations and I think that helps us to kind of share information from the countries to the UK and back again.

Q: How would you differentiate British Council methodology of teaching English from other institutes?

A: Duncan: I wouldn't. We're not different, necessarily. The way we teach English, there isn't one way of teaching English. We use many sorts of techniques and understanding of what helps learners. So, learning that is centred on the learner, what they want, what they need, what they can do and what they want to do is the best.

Mina:  One of the things I like about our approach is that we have a global approach so that learners all over the world are mostly getting exactly the same thing. So, that kind of goes towards the fairness agenda. You know, everybody gets the same thing when they come to the British Council globally.

Q: What advice would you give to the study abroad aspirants who are preparing for IELTS or any other English assessment test?

A: Mina: Practice. Practice with people. So, tests have different parts. You have the four skills, or sometimes you don't have the four skills. But I think if you have a spoken element to any test, use the language. Speak.

Duncan:  Get familiar with the test in a way that means you're not stressed out and nervous about the test per se. Of course, everybody is nervous. But that you are more relaxed.

Another bit of advice is to give yourself enough time. Think about when you need to get your test results. Book your test at the right time. Don't book it for next week or the week after. Think, I need it in three months or six months. So that you have enough time to prepare yourself for that test

Q:  Any certification you're planning to introduce? Or planning to update an existing one as per the changing global demands?

A: Duncan: I don't think so. I think tests like IELTS, for example, are still very valid in the current world and the certification, what could change is the test. The certificate is the same.

The certificate says your English is at this level for speaking, this level for reading. So even if the method changes to assess that, the certificate is the same. We don't rush to change too quickly. We want to make sure that the technology and the AI, are meeting the needs before we change things too quickly. We are more interested in trying and teaching or helping the world. For example, use something like CFR, the Common European Framework.

So this A1, A2, this way of talking about languages similar to IELTS 5, 6, 7 and 8. Have everybody talk about the same thing. So instead of saying that my English is good, what does it mean? My English is IELTS 5 or my English is what we call B1 or something like that. So everybody understands it's the same thing.

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