New GlobalEnglish Assessment Service Simplifies Measurement of Business English Skills

BRISBANE, CA -- December 22, 2004 -- GlobalEnglish Corporation, the leading online English learning and support service provider for business communication, announced today the release of the Enterprise English Assessment Service, featuring the Business English Level Indicator Test (BELIT)(TM). The new service permits global companies to conveniently assess how well their employees currently communicate in English, while identifying those individuals who need to improve their English skills.

The Enterprise English Assessment Service was developed in response to the needs expressed by human resources and training professionals for an efficient and accurate measure of English training needs. It is a practical, scalable solution for global organizations, offering simple setup, administration and reporting tools for testing of up to 100,000 employees.

“Through our years of experience working with global corporations, we have seen that many do not realize the negative business impact that language barriers have on strategic growth,” said Ron Hoge, GlobalEnglish President and CEO. “We have demonstrated over and over again, with companies like Hilton International, Deloitte, Schneider Electric and Procter & Gamble, that thousands of hours of productivity can be gained -- and millions of dollars saved -- by improving English proficiency within a global workforce.”

The Enterprise English Assessment Service provides an analysis of the scope and scale of an organization’s business communication challenges surrounding language. In addition to answering standard test questions that evaluate current English skills, test takers are asked to describe their need for communicating in English. Group reporting also allows test results to be aggregated and analyzed over an entire enterprise or for a single department or region.

“We developed the Enterprise English Assessment Service because our research has shown that although 91 percent of employees of global corporations say that English skills are critical or important to their jobs, only 9 percent believe that their proficiency is sufficient to succeed in their current roles,” said Mark Engelter, Director of Marketing for GlobalEnglish Corporation. “This service will help companies quickly and easily determine the need for training and efficiently direct resources to the appropriate employees.”

The Business English Level Indicator Test, which assesses a test taker’s current English level, was developed in cooperation with Dr. Kathleen Bailey, professor of applied linguistics at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and author of Learning About Language Assessment: Dilemmas, Decisions and Directions. The 25- to 30-minute test is delivered entirely online to determine the test taker’s current level of English reading and listening ability. The BELIT results can also be used with the GlobalEnglish personalized study plan to match training with current level of English proficiency.

GlobalEnglish and non-GlobalEnglish customers may purchase the Enterprise English Assessment Service. For more information about how GlobalEnglish can help prepare your workforce for global business opportunities, write to info@globalenglish.com.

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Dayna Verstegen

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GlobalEnglish Corporation

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