Approaches to language acquisition for adult students
Erasmus+
2019 - 2022
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Project Bio
Communication in foreign languages is one of the eight key competencies defined by the European Reference Framework. It consists in the ability to understand spoken messages, to initiate, sustain and conclude conversations and to read, understand and produce texts appropriate to one’s individual needs. A positive attitude involves the appreciation of cultural diversity and an interest in and curiosity about languages and intercultural communication. Language teaching and learning is essential to ensuring that European citizens can move, work and learn freely throughout Europe. This will help boost jobs and growth, and contribute to a mutual understanding of other countries and cultures. It is also essential to ensure that language deficiencies are not a barrier to participation in society. The role of the European Commission is to coordinate efforts with national governments to pursue the objectives of the strategic framework for languages with support from the activities of Erasmus+.
This project addressed two distinct target groups:
- adult learners; this group needs special approaches in comparison to those being used in formal education at schools (in terms of fostering their awareness of their own skills and potential for learning foreign languages);
- educators (teachers and trainers); this target group needs to keep pace with the development of technology as well as with the increased demand for the quality education, that should be tailored to the requirements of the first target group in order to fulfill the above mentioned need.
The methodology of the project was based entirely on the sharing: sharing of expertise as well as sharing of newly gained experience. During the first phase the partnership worked on the selection of the methods and problem areas in the language teaching. The second phase was dedicated to the actual application, training and sharing. The partners shared their expertise they have in the language teaching; they focused on finding the most innovative and effective methods that may help to overcome the most important problem areas in the language teaching with the maximum added value for the learning effect of the learners. The partners also chose one or more methods that they intended to implement into their classes. After testing and evaluating of the chosen approaches in their organizations, the partners shared the experience and demonstrated the approach and lessons learned. Finally, the last phase was focused on final evaluation of the selected approaches and their processing into a practical toolkit where the methods are presented in a formalized form as a printable publication. All methods were also processed in to instructional videos available on YouTube.
Project Objectives
The main objective of the project was to contribute to the provision of the quality and effective teaching methods and tools for education providers - teachers and trainers. In order to achieve the main objective, the project activities will foced on:
- fostering of the awareness of importance of speaking foreign languages in the globalizing society;
- improvement of the access to the quality innovative and effective teaching and training tools and
methods for teaching foreign languages to adult learners;
- sharing and evaluation of various approaches to teaching English to adults;
- providing a simple comparative analysis of the collected approaches focused on their benefits and feasibility;
- promotion of the life-long learning, especially in relation to the importance of multilingualism.
Learning - Teaching - Training Activities
The main objective of the LTTA was to provide a synergistic environment for presenting our expertise and capacities using learning by doing approach. The participants took part in several different kinds of activities that complemented each other, providing optimal conditions for sharing and/or learning the particular methodological approach. Each partner led a workshop demonstrating the approaches they use and want to share.
The events consisted of the following activities:
1 - presentation of the main problem areas in language teaching and training, hot topics - each partner presented 1-2 pre-selected methods including the problem areas to focus on;
2 - practical workshop: presentation/rehearsal of the selected teaching approaches - group work;
3 - evaluation (SWOT analysis) of the combinations of A1 and A2 - each partner evaluated the method from the point of view of their expertise, considering their own target groups, condition etc.;
4 - swap: selection of approaches to be tried under different conditions (in different partner organization).
The aim of these workshops was:
- to learn about new possibilities in the language teaching to adults;
- to train the selected methods in the group;
- to learn by doing;
- to provide a feedback on the workshops, the content as well as the process;
- to provide the recommendations usable by the final result - the kit.
Partnership
Burdur Evrensel istikra Destekleme Dernegi, Turkey
Centro de Educación Permanente Siete Villas, Spain
DANCE CLUB 7/8B HASKOVO SDRUZHENIE, Bulgaria
GECKO PROGRAMMES LIMITED, United Kingdom
Internationella Kvinnoföreningen, Sweden
Learning for Integration ry, Finland
Main project outputs
The project will produce various results, starting from the tangible products (a toolkit of recommended innovative teaching methods suitable for teaching foreign languages and their comparative analysis) to specific outputs (improvement of the teaching skills of the involved teachers, increase of the awareness of the importance of multilingualism in the EU and creation of a new network of partners) and outcomes (improvement of the efficacy of the newly trained teachers in their language lessons, improvement of the training offer of the participating partners and possible involvement in further projects within the new network of partners), resulting in certain impacts (improvement of the learning results of the learners in the language classes of the project partners, improvement of the overall quality of the language teaching in the partner organizations and thus their reputation, improvement of the overall potential of involvement in other international projects).
Approaches to language acquisition for adult students (Project toolkit)