Work

Findings of the BEA 2026 Shared Task on Vocabulary Difficulty Prediction for English Learners

Year: 2026

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: This paper reports findings from the BEA 2026 Shared Task on Vocabulary Difficulty Prediction for English Learners across three L1s (Spanish, German and Mandarin).The task featured open and closed tracks, using data from the British Council's Knowledgebased Vocabulary Lists (KVL).Submissions were received from 23 teams employing diverse modelling approaches, including transformers, Large Language Models, feature-based approaches and ensembles.Results were evaluated using RMSE, with winning systems significantly exceeding the baseline and establishing new state-of-the-art benchmarks.This paper offers an examination of the participating systems, performance across tracks and L1s, and the factors that can affect prediction accuracy.

Source: Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications

DOI: 10.18653/v1/2026.bea-1.65

Authors: Mariano Felice, Lucy Skidmore

Institution: British Council

Language: English

Topic: Second Language Acquisition and Learning

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

OpenAlex ID: W7166844970