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ACS International Schools serve international and local communities from three sites in Greater London: Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon. The schools are co-educational and offer day and boarding education to pupils aged two to eighteen. They educate a multinational student body in accordance with American and internationally recognised educational principles and practices, such as the International Baccalaureate. ACS started the search for an online language-learning environment that would be accessible to pupils from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well as catering to different learning styles and ability levels. In 2006, the school’s management chose the Rosetta Stone Classroom language learning programme to integrate its large population of international students into the school environment.

With their student intake originating from around the world, ACS International Schools needed to address the educational needs of students with different mother tongues, cultural experiences and educational backgrounds to integrate this diverse student body into the environment of their schools.

“We haDifferentiation, particularly in the field of language learning, is extremely important to ACS, and they identified the need for an adaptable online resource to supplement their specialist language teachers and the traditional learning methodology they were using.

After recommendations from MFL staff at the school, ACS Egham arranged a trial with Rosetta Stone, which allows both teachers and pupils access to 25 languages, ranging from Arabic to Spanish.
By recreating the instinctive language-learning experience we undertake as children learning our first language, Rosetta Stone engages learners from the first screen, enabling learners from distinct linguistic backgrounds to learn simultaneously.

In order to offer language-learning support to a wider audience, after an initial trial, ACS Schools chose to adopt the Rosetta Stone solution for all 2,450 pupils and staff members across three sites. As the programme can be accessed from home or school via an internet connection, it offers high levels of flexibility and ‘scalability’ to international schools.

Donna Ellery, IT coordinator for ACS Egham, said, “This is an extremely useful tool for differentiation, and really helps us cater to the different learning styles and backgrounds of international students.”
The programme is now in use across all three sites, proving a popular resource for both EAL and MFL teaching. Many of the school’s language teachers use Rosetta Stone during class time once a week, and find it extremely useful. As well as serving as a learning tool for pupils, a centralised management tool, Rosetta Stone Manager, allows teachers and administrators to track pupil progress, edit the available curriculum and perform comparative analysis on individual and class progress.

Donna Ellery commented, “Our students really enjoy the freedom to study in their free time and the ability to access the programme from home. “The management tool allows teachers to monitor and analyse pupil progress, which enables them to reinforce areas of difficulty in the classroom, providing a blended language-learning solution“.

The popularity of the programme has been such that parents and families of pupils are increasingly requesting access to it.

Available in more than thirty languages, the Rosetta Stone language-learning solution is used by schools, organisations and millions of individuals in over 150 countries throughout the world. Rosetta Stone Classroom will be presented at OEB in the exhibition area.

More information at www.rosettastone.co.uk.