README.md

---
pretty_name: L2-Bench
license: cc-by-sa-4.0
language:
- en
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
tags:
- arxiv:2607.08842
- AI evaluations
- AI for education
- AIED
- Language learning
- English language teaching
- Learning design
- Second language acquisition
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: tasks
    path: "l2-bench_tasks.csv"
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extra_gated_description: >-
  L2-Bench is released for researcher, education practitioner, and stakeholder use. We ask
  for a few details so that we can understand how the benchmark is being used, notify you of
  corrections and new versions, and record your agreement to the contamination mitigation
  below. Access is granted automatically as soon as you submit this form.
extra_gated_prompt: >-
  You agree that you will not use L2-Bench to train or fine-tune AI models or machine
  learning algorithms. We also request that you do not publish examples from the dataset in
  plain text or as images online, to help prevent leakage into foundation model training
  corpora.


  Our [Privacy Policy](https://corp.oup.com/privacy-policy/) sets out how OUP handles your
  personal information and your rights to object to your personal information being
  processed as part of OUP's business activities.
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      value: other
  Country: country
  "How do you plan to use the L2-Bench benchmark dataset?": text
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extra_gated_button_content: "Agree and access L2-Bench"
---

**L2-Bench** is a 1,000-item benchmark for measuring LLM capabilities in Second Language (L2) Education, written by experts and validated by hundreds of practitioners globally. Each item pairs an authentic teaching task (with resources where applicable) with a hand-written reference answer and a weighted, three-layer scoring rubric.

**Resources**
- **Paper:** [L2-Bench: An Evaluation Benchmark for Measuring LLM Capabilities in Second Language Education](https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08842)
- **Scoring pipeline:** [OUP/l2-bench-pipeline](https://huggingface.co/spaces/OUP/l2-bench-pipeline)
- **L2-Bench site:** [L2-Bench release blog](https://benchmarks.elt.edu.oup.com/blog/l2-bench-open-dataset-release)


## Dataset Details

### Contents

| Path | Description |
|------|-------------|
| `l2-bench_tasks.csv` | The benchmark dataset: 1,000 rows × 20 columns |
| `resources_for_tasks/` | 317 supporting files (231 `.md`, 86 `.csv`) referenced by tasks |

### Benchmark Schema

| Column | Description |
|--------|-------------|
| `task_key` | Integer task identifier (range 3–1343, non-contiguous) |
| `version_at_time_of_draft` | Internal dataset version the item was authored under |
| `competency` | One of 12 top-level competencies |
| `task` | The user-facing task prompt given to the model |
| `task_system_prompt` | System prompt establishing the asker's role and context |
| `task_variables` | Educational context factors for the item |
| `task_resource_file_link_1` | Filename in `resources_for_tasks/`, appended to the prompt |
| `task_resource_file_link_2` | Second resource file, where applicable |
| `task_resource_file_link_3` | Third resource slot, where applicable |
| `subcompetency_1` … `subcompetency_6` | Sub-competencies, where applicable |
| `task_criteria` | Task item-specific rubric criteria |
| `consensus_criteria` | Sub-competency rubric criteria |
| `universal_criteria` | Cross-cutting rubric criteria |
| `reference_answer` | Expert-authored answer written to score full marks against the rubric |
| `canary_string` | Identifier to help prevent leakage into training corpora |

### Criteria encoding

The three criteria columns each hold a pipe-delimited (`|`) list of entries in the form:

```
<criterion_id>. <description> ==<weight>
```

- Weights are integers in ±[2, 10]
- `task_criteria` IDs are item-local (`01`,`02`, …) and are namespaced by task key when scored (e.g. `470-08`)
- `consensus_criteria` and `universal_criteria` IDs are global (e.g. `06a-04`, `01u3` respectively).


## Contamination Mitigations

The dataset may not be used for training AI models or machine learning algorithms.

We request that you do not reveal examples from this dataset in plain text or images online, to help prevent leakage into foundation model training corpora or cheating by models with access to the internet. We include the following canary string to make it easier to filter out our benchmark from training corpora and prevent models from directly retrieving the ground-truth answers:

```
l2:7f85ee33-2e5b-43ce-88c1-b63fbb5e3d7a
```

To enable us to identify instances of (accidental) training or implicit overfitting on L2-Bench, we retain a small private held-out set of identically distributed L2-Bench examples.

Access to this dataset is gated with automatic approval: you need a free Hugging Face account and must accept the terms above. Approval is instant. Programmatic access requires a token — see the pipeline's Quick Start. Our [Privacy Policy](https://corp.oup.com/privacy-policy/) sets out how OUP handles your personal information and your rights to object to your personal information being processed as part of OUP's business activities.


## Licence

This dataset is released under [CC-BY-SA-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
© 2026 Oxford University Press.

The accompanying reference implementation pipeline code is MIT-licensed.


## Citation

If you use L2-Bench in your research, please cite our work. The full citation is available below:

```bibtex
@misc{edgell2026l2benchevaluationbenchmarkmeasuring,
      title={L2-Bench: An Evaluation Benchmark for Measuring LLM Capabilities in Second Language Education}, 
      author={James Edgell and Wm. Matthew Kennedy and Ben Knight and Danielle Carvalho and Martin Ku and Isaac Pattis},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2607.08842},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CY},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08842}, 
}
```

For any inquiries or feedback, including submitting corrections, please use the "Register Interest" webform on our [L2-Bench site](https://benchmarks.elt.edu.oup.com/) and we will respond as soon as we can.


## Version History

| Version | Date | Author | Changes |
|---------|------|--------|---------|
| 1.0.0 | 2026-07-30 | J. Edgell | Initial public release |