Introduction to Cool English

To enhance students' English skills, the Ministry of Education collaborated with Professor Chen, Hao-Jan's team from National Taiwan Normal University's English Department to create the "Cool English Online Learning Platform" for junior high and elementary students. Launched on June 25, 2015, Cool English has garnered praise and boasts 1.6 million registered users and 200 million uses, earning recognition from students, parents, teachers, and schools.

Cool English covers listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary/grammar, games, remedial content, and exam-focused content for junior high and elementary students. It adapts to mobile devices, enabling interactive learning on smartphones or tablets, freeing users from desktop limitations.

To expand its reach, a high school and vocational school section was added in November 2019. It offers diverse courses categorized by proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, exams, games, and textbook supplements. With 57 courses for regular high schools and 59 for vocational high schools, covering the widest range of content in the nation.

In the future, Cool English will develop diverse courses for junior high and elementary school students, making learning fun and convenient. We'll update materials and offer resources for high school and vocational students, such as English interviews and autobiography writing. Workshops, briefings, and competitions will be organized to promote the platform's use in teaching and learning.

Platform Features and Expected Learning Outcomes

For Junior High and Elementary School

• "VOA @the movies": Provides popular movie-related phrases and instruction content, making English listening practice more enjoyable.
• "Interactive Videos": Provides videos that are categorized by difficulty level, allowing learners of different levels to practice listening through lively animations.
• "Scholastic Watch & Learn Library": Provides over 230 videos from the Scholastic's website, and supplementary materials for diverse English learning.
• "Text to Speech Tools": Turns texts into speech instantly, with multiple voices and speed available, and files downloadable.
• "Phonics": Provides detailed explanation videos with letter-based mini-games to assist learners in mastering pronunciation rules.
• "Automatic Speech Recognition": Provides real-time pronunciation correction to help learners practice speaking and repetition.
• "CoolE Bot": A state-of-the-art AI chatbot that can chat with you about everything. "Pronunciation Assessment": Grades the users’ pronunciation by four criteria, including “pronunciation”, “accuracy”, “fluency”, and “completeness”, and provides users with individual scores of the four criteria.

• "Magical Reading Journey/Reading Wonderland": Provides selected English picture books with diverse themes and illustrations for learners to enjoy the pleasure of reading.
• "Scholastic Bookflix": Provides diverse, themed picture books from Scholastic, categorized into nine major themes to enhance reading skills.
• "American TCM Reader": covers various literary genres and diverse subject content, integrating language into real-life situations.
• "CLIL Reader Area": Provides English readers based on different grades and academic fields, allowing students to enhance their English reading skills while gaining interdisciplinary knowledge.
• "Learning from Comics: Pepper&Carrot": Provides entertaining comics and voiceovers, training learners' picture-based comprehension and listening skills.
• "Article Structure and Re-construction Exercises": Provides various question types adapted from selected short texts to enhance understanding of English articles and writing skills.
• "Thematic Vocabulary": Provides interactive online exercises of varying difficulty levels to help learners become familiar with vocabulary.
• "Vocabulary Training Camp": Provides rich content for mastering 2000 words in meaning, usage, and pronunciation.
• "VOA: Everyday Grammar": Provides detailed explanation videos for understanding English grammar.
• "Grammar Magic Book": Provides detailed explanation videos and interactive online exercises for English grammar comprehension.

• "Lyrics Game": Provides selected popular music, allowing learners to practice listening and typing lyrics in an enjoyable way.
• "Game Carnival": Offers a selection of over a hundred games to make English learning more fun.

• "Basic Learning (new version)" :provides real-life instructional videos for grade-focused remedial teaching and post-class practice.
• "Comprehensive Assessment Program": Provides interactive quizzes with past exam questions and explanations for users.
• "Textbook Supplement": Provides supplementary materials based on different textbook versions, allowing learners to prepare or review course content.
• "AI Teacher Tools": A collection of teaching tools designed for teachers.

For Vocational and High School

• "Textbook Supplement": Provides supplementary materials based on different textbook versions, allowing learners to prepare or review course content.
• "AI Teacher Tools": A collection of teaching tools designed for teachers.
• "Entrance Exam(High School)": Provides entrance exam-related sample questions and past exam questions with detailed explanations. There are also listening comprehension test questions for the GSAT(學測) along with detailed explanations available for candidates to practice and review.
• "Test (Vocational School)": Provides past years' unified exam (統測) questions with detailed explanations and various practice questions for practice and review.
• "Cool English Hollywood": Practices English listening through classic movies.
• "Learn from the Movies": Uses two-minute movie clips to quickly learn American English expressions, making English learning more dynamic.
• "Scholastic Scienceflix": Provides an extensive collection of books from Scholastic's website, covering over 70 science fields with comprehensive learning units to enhance scientific knowledge in English.
• "Scholastic Watch & Learn Library": Provides over 230 videos from the Scholastic's website, and supplementary materials for diverse English learning.
• "One-Minute News": Provides English news with dual subtitles for simpler learning and improved listening skills while staying updated with international events.
• "Slang Dictionary": Introduces common English slang with usage examples for quick understanding.
• "Text to Speech Tools": Turns texts into speech instantly, with multiple voices and speed available, and files downloadable.li>
• "Automatic Speech Recognition": Provides immediate pronunciation correction to help learners practice speaking repeatedly.

• "Let's Learn English": Introduces spoken English used in daily life, enabling learners to quickly grasp common phrases.
• "Let's Speak English": Allows learners to speak English through "shadowing" and provides online pronunciation correction for speaking practice.
• "Chirpy Cardinal Chatbot": Developed by Stanford University's NLP team, Chirpy Cardinal engages in daily English conversations to enhance speaking abilities.
• "CoolE Bot": A state-of-the-art AI chatbot that can chat with you about everything.
• "Pronunciation Assessment": Grades the users’ pronunciation by four criteria, including “pronunciation”, “accuracy”, “fluency”, and “completeness”, and provides users with individual scores of the four criteria.

• "World News": Rates news articles by difficulty, explains new words, and provides grammar examples to aid learners at various levels in acquiring knowledge and enhancing reading skills.
• "Scholastic Bookflix": Provides diverse, themed picture books from Scholastic, categorized into nine major themes to enhance reading skills.
• "Scholastic Trueflix": Provides a rich collection of books from Scholastic's website, categorized into 26 major themes, including audio-enhanced books to improve English skills and expand knowledge.
• "Focus Taiwan": Selects news from various topics, ranging from politics, business, society, sports, science and technology, and culture.

• "Translation": Offers exercises for various sentence structures to help learners become more familiar with basic sentence patterns for translation and writing applications.
• "Grammar Checker": Provides online essay grading, detects grammar errors, and recommends corrections.
• "TOEIC Writing Assessment": Evaluates your essay based on TOEIC Writing rubric, and also provides the overall feedback for your article.
• "AI Writing Assistants": Helps correct the grammatical errors in your essay and provides you with constructive writing feedback.
• "News Words": Introduces common news vocabulary through news segments, helping learners understand word meanings and usage.
• "Collocations": Provides collocation exercises to help understand the concept of word combinations in English and how to use them correctly.

• "Learn Grammar from Pop Songs": Learn English grammar through listening to music, making English grammar easy to remember.
• "Grammar Exercises": Compiles common grammar rules to help learners clarify English grammar concepts.
• "Everyday Grammar": Native speakers explain grammar through dialogue and include Chinese subtitles to help learners become more familiar with and understand grammar content.

• "English Fun Club": Provides fun games for relaxed and enjoyable English learning.

• "Previous Exam - GSAT Reading": Compiles past years' scholastic ability test (學測) / comprehensive assessment program (指考) reading test questions with explanations and translations practice and review.
• "Mock Test - Listening": Provides high school English listening test questions, providing more listening practice resources.