Is the Global Scale of English (GSE) Really the "Love-Child" of Lucifer and Empusa?

How good is my English?

Am I progressing?

What do I need to do next?

The questions are simple! The answers…not so much! Now, I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of the GSE (you can explore this here and the other hotlinks - the red links - below).

Suffice to say…not too shabby – a very useful project (for students)!8 Pearson even went so far as to create an on-line GSE Teachers Toolkit to help schools ‘audit’ their curriculum outcomes and syllabi and create their own sets of learning outcomes (LOs)…from a huge array of learning outcomes for YLs, EAP / EGAP students, ESP learners and folk interested in General English (whatever that might be)!

Oh, and did I mention that all this was OPEN-SOURCE and…

Yes, FREE of CHARGE!8 I have to admit I fell in love with this chubby, little baby as soon as I saw her…and I watched her grow as she began to play with Grammar and Lexical learning outcomes, too. She’s not quite there with those ones…but she is making rapid progress and Pearson's better use of research, corpora and technology suggests she’ll get there soon…inşallah! 8 Now, you might ask 'why'…why I grabbed her rosy, little cheeks and said ‘I just wanna eat you all up’! Well, in my work I spend a lot of time working with schools on Curriculum Renewal initiatives. Back in the bad, old days…I would spend months helping teachers learn how to write Learning Outcomes (LOs). The teachers I was working with would also spend hours sending me ‘hate-mail’…saying things like:

I am not qualified to do this…

This is killing me…I just can’t cope…

All this is wasting my time…I just want to be in the classroom…

I felt many of these ‘pains’, I did! 8 However, I recognised that many teachers:

Had fallen into the 'trap' of textbook-driven teaching…

Were running lessons that were little more than activity-based or content-driven classroom ‘TO-DO’ checklists…

Lacked the curriculum and assessment 'literacy' to design the type of lessons that linked clear outcomes to effective learning opportunities…Yani, many teachers were not doing the type of things they wanted to do (deep down...in their heart of hearts)…they were not using the creativity they had…and were (frequently) getting more and more frustrated (and burned out) by this. 8