Dear all,
We invite participation in our Shared Task on
Vocabulary Difficulty Prediction for English Learners, which will be hosted at
The 21st
Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (co-located with ACL 2026) both online and in person in San Diego, CA, United States.
This shared task focuses on predicting the difficulty of English vocabulary for learners with different L1 backgrounds. Evaluation will use the British Council’s Knowledge-based Vocabulary Lists (KVL), which provide psychometrically calibrated difficulty scores
for English learners with Spanish, German, and Mandarin L1s. The task includes a Closed Track, limited to the provided data and standard NLP resources, and an Open Track, which allows external data and use of LLMs, to explore the full potential of current
AI approaches.
Important Dates
26 January: Release of training
data and baseline models
20 March: Test data release
27 March: System submissions from teams due
3 April: Announcement of evaluation results by the organisers
24 April: System papers due
1 May: Paper reviews returned
12 May: Final camera-ready submissions
2-3 July: BEA 2026 workshop at ACL
Organisers: Mariano Felice (British Council) and Lucy Skidmore (British Council).
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