For international students, mastering English is not just about passing a test — it’s about unlocking academic success, building confidence, and finding belonging in new cultural and intellectual spaces. This webinar explores the transformative potential of language assessments that are designed with this broader purpose in mind: not simply as gatekeepers to university admission, but as meaningful tools for supporting student agency, voice, and human flourishing.
In this webinar, delivered with Professor Eoin Jordan, and Xuan Gou, who is an international student from the University of St Andrews, we address perspectives from academia, assessment, and lived experience. Through the lens of the LANGUAGECERT Academic test, we examine how clearly defined constructs related to writing, oracy and communicative language competence can inform assessments that reflect the real-world skills students need to survive, thrive, and contribute meaningfully in higher education and beyond.
In an era increasingly shaped by AI, we ask how human-centred assessment might support identity, promote equality, and foster radical kindness — not by reinforcing deficit models, but by valuing diverse pathways and ways of knowing. A key part of this conversation will include Xuan sharing her lived experience as a Chinese postgraduate student navigating the UK academic system, highlighting both the challenges she has faced and the opportunities for more inclusive design.
