Do you want to sharpen your English language skills? Or maybe find your dream job based on your communication skills? Well, then Cambridge English's new digital initiatives are all you need. Cambridge Assessment English, Department of the University of Cambridge recently announced three digital initiatives — the Cambridge English Qualifications Programme, the BEC (Business English Certificate) app and a website, campustowork.org.
The Cambridge English Qualification Programme was launched in partnership with TCS iON to make the Business English Certificate from Cambridge available to almost every student in India. "TCS runs test centres every 50 kilometres. Traditionally, BEC Certification is very popular for employability, but a lot of metro students are taking the test. A lot of students from the rural parts of Tamil Nadu and the country wanted to take it. So, through this initiative and the technology and infrastructure of TCS, BEC will now be available across 400 cities in India in more than 2,000 locations," says T K Arunachalam, Regional Director, South Asia, Cambridge English Language Assessment.
The second initiative, the BEC app, supports candidates with exam preparation through a detailed understanding of the format of the paper through revision exercises. "Since we are reaching out to a lot of people from rural areas, the real challenge is learning. To take the test, candidates need to go through a learning provision to develop or enhance their English language skills. To support this, we've now launched the official BEC learning app in India, which is called BEC from Cambridge. It's a free app and one can download it on iOS and Android," he says, adding that the app has more than 120 learning videos, each 3-5 minutes long, which students can download from anywhere and access its content. The app is highly interactive and has animation characters that play the role of a teacher and a student. The free BEC exam orientation is now made available to all the students in India.
The third initiative, campustowork.org is an enabler to support employability of rural students in the country. This portal was launched earlier as a connect between corporates and campuses. Arunachalam believes that the objective of reaching out to the rural students was not being met and for that purpose, they had to relaunch it with certain improvements.
"We found that it was predominantly colleges and companies in cities alone coming into the platform. Our objective of reaching out to rural students was not being met because the way the platform was structured. We've now changed the structure of the platform in such a way that a student from a remote area or a student who has the right credentials and talent can enrol themselves to campustowork.org," says Arunachalam. The portal brings corporates, educational institutions and students together to pick the right candidates for suitable vacancies. It basically helps one connect with an employer who appreciates their skills and capabilities. One can also connect with mentors to guide them on any issues or questions related to their career.
