CELA to set up East Asia HQ in Beijing

The UK's Cambridge English Language Assessment will set up its headquarters of East Asia in Beijing, Michael Milanovic, chief executive of the CELA, said at a forum in Beijing on Monday.

Milanovic said they had been working in China since the 1990s, and had seen the Chinese people's interests in English and their standard of English grow dramatically.

"The success that China has achieved so far in relation to the standard of English is very impressive, but of course there is a long way to go. I believe that there are some, like 500 million people are learning English in China and the learning of English starts in elementary schools," he said, adding that headquarters of the CELA will be set up in Beijing in the future, in order to attract more resources to invest in the Chinese market.

The CELA, which provides English tests and certificates to people across the world, was established in 1913 and has been cooperating with China since 1993.

More than 400 million people from about 130 countries take English examinations organized by the CELA each year, in order to assess their English standards for overseas study or career development.

More than 13,500 universities, enterprises and institutes around the world recognize English certificates issued by the CELA.

To mark its 100th birthday, as well to celebrate its 20 years of cooperation with China, the CELA organized a forum on language learning, teaching and assessment in Beijing on Monday, inviting experts and scholars from both China and the UK to share their perspectives.

Jin Yan, an English professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said the English assessment system in China was still exam-oriented and learners cannot achieve a balanced development in listening, speaking, reading and writing.

She also said there is still a lot to learn from the international assessment system, and added that examinations organized by the CELA, such as the International English Language Test System and the Business English of Cambridge, can reflect test-takers' English ability in a proper way.

Lynda Taylor, a senior lecturer in language assessment at University of Bedfordshire, also a consultant of the CELA, said at the forum that the CELA has been researching and improving the English assessment system for a long time.

With the development of the IT industry, the CELA introduced a computer-based assessment system into business English in 2009, she said.

As the organizer, the CELA said they held the forum to promote the development of the English assessment system, as well to promote English teaching and learning in China. According to the CELA, they will continue working on popularizing the assessment system of Cambridge Young Learners' English and the BEC in the future.