Lexia English joins the robust Lexia suite of literacy products in helping all students to reach their academic potential, enhancing educational equity, and empowering emergent bilinguals to progress linguistically and academically. Lexia is now the sole source provider of the K-6 English language development solution.

"While the product’s name and look have changed, its curriculum remains the same," said Lexia President Nick Gaehde. "In addition to renaming the product, we’re releasing version 2.0, which contains new tools to help emergent bilingual students as they learn academic English and empower educators to streamline instruction and ensure their efficacy."

Lexia English is an adaptive blended learning program designed to help emergent bilingual students, also known as English language learners, acquire higher language proficiency levels of English. With embedded alignment with multiple language proficiency standards and speech recognition technology, the program focuses on three key areas: speaking, listening, and grammar. Lexia English blends language learning with subject knowledge to support academic achievement, while culturally and ethnically diverse characters engage and encourage students throughout their learning journeys. Currently, more than 40,000 students have used the product in over 1,400 schools.

The program, originally released in August 2020, has already received several high-profile industry accolades:

• Winner, SIIA’s 2021 EdTech CODiE Awards
• Winner, American Business Awards’ 2021 New Product Awards
• Winner, Tech & Learning’s 2020 Best of Show awards
• Winner, THE Journal’s 2020 New Product Awards
• Finalist, The EdTech Awards’ 2021 Cool Tools

The program’s updates include an in-program auto-placement tool for new students. The tool determines each student’s correct entry point into the program by assessing both receptive and productive language skills, which is crucial as emergent bilingual students return to school, having had very few formative assessments conducted during the mandatory remote learning.

In addition, Lexia English now includes teacher-led speaking lessons in digital format. This new feature supports a blended-learning model and the need for teacher-led, targeted instruction.

Lexia English is available on the web and an iPad app. The app will be also available in the Google Play store for Android devices later in the year.

"We know from research that oral language is the foundation of later reading ability. By providing students with frequent listening and speaking practice, particularly for academic language, Lexia English brings the best of language acquisition strategies and literacy outcomes for today’s emergent bilinguals," said Gaehde. "And with these new updates, there’s no doubt that it will be an industry leader for years to come."