Joint TEASIG & IPSEN SIG: Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Practice: Candidate Reactions to Global English Accents in a Listening Test

The British Council is a leader in promoting equality, diversity and inclusion, important themes for our products around the world, whether in the arts, society, inclusive education, teaching English for in the exams that we offer.

In 2020, the test production and quality assurance teams of Global Assessments began to implement a new EDI policy for item writing and quality review. This policy has since helped to ensure that our test content is accessible to and representative of our test candidates. The policy provides regulations on creating tests that are impartial and inclusive of a global candidature and for an international speaker of English.

This EDI item writing policy has been implemented with an intention to create long-term washback on classroom learning and teaching and surrounding materials. By making the test content more relatable and accessible to a global population, Global Assessments aims to create a more inclusive experience for English language learners and test takers.

Name and bio of speaker:

Gemma Bellhouse is the Test Quality Assurance Manager for the British Council and Global Assessments tests and she is based in Brussels, Belgium. Gemma holds an MSc from Oxford in Applied Linguistics & Second Language Acquisition and has research experience in language test washback, teacher training, language learning strategies, corpus linguistics and EDI policy impact. She has been involved in the management of item writing and test production and maintaining the quality of standardised and international English language tests since 2015. Since joining the Global Assessments team in 2019, she has supported in the quality control processes and management of the Global Assessments tests, including new EDI processes and policies for delivery and test content creation.

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