Appy to Teach Languages Erasmus Project

Project Title

Appy to Teach Languages

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Titus Salt School and Amandus-Abendroth Gymnasium have forged a strong link over the past ten years and have an excellent track record of successful collaborative projects: a European E-Twinning Quality Label, a successful Bilateral Comenius project, in which an international award winning film was made, a work experience pilot and regular contact between approximately one hundred and fifty of our students through a pen-friend link. We wished to build upon these strong links and our successful work experience over the past few years and built an even stronger partnership that can continue to benefit our students and the local community.

Referring to the Europe 2020 strategy, we wanted to create an innovative project that delivered effective investments in education, research and innovation by creating an app to learn a foreign language at a young age. Applying the language skills of students in two schools, the aim was to teach a foreign language to younger children through the use of mobile technologies, which not only encouraged the primary pupils to keep learning a foreign language, which is crucial for their future job prospects but it also motivated the secondary pupils to go on learning foreign languages too. It was envisaged that students engaged in this project to increase their job prospects through practice in different fields of work: teaching, programming, marketing, coding. By increasing their career opportunities and inspiring them to make lifelong learning and mobility a reality, we hope to have contributed to poverty reduction and the reduction of early school leavers, something which is critical on a school, national and international level.

We worked together to enable our students to achieve the Foreign Language Leaders Award. This was the certification gained for producing Apps and a website to teach languages and delivering these Apps in a Language Festival at both schools. Students worked with students form a local university in each phase of the project in order to produce quality teaching materials that proved to be an innovative way to teach languages. The information and training gained from working with these students was cascaded down to other students participating in the project over the following years in the project too. The initial level of the app was evaluated, modified and added to so that at the end of the three years there is now a wealth of resources, created by our students, available to young language learners. In addition to creating the resources, the students marketed them to the local and wider community and taught primary school students a foreign language in Language Festivals, held in both Cuxhaven and Bradford.

The project involved around 20 students from each school each year of the project These students were from a variety of social backgrounds. We tried to encourage students from poorer backgrounds to participate in the project as they got the opportunity to experience a new culture and language and benefited from the acquisition of skills that have hopefully made them socially mobile and, potentially, raised their aspirations. We also tried to ensure that we provided opportunities for students with Special Educational Needs. The students took on many responsibilities during the project such as maintaining the eTwinning Twinspace, market research and organisation of the festivals.

The impact of our project has been significant and will continue to have an impact for years after the end of the project through the dissemination of the apps and methodology and also through continuing with the Language Festivals once they have become an established part of our school routine. We believe we have enhanced the employability, ICT and language skills of our students and have taught our students to be responsible citizens, tolerant of other cultures. We have also impacted upon younger learners by providing innovative language learning resources which have hopefully fostered in them a thirst for language learning that should continue into their later studies. We have also impacted upon the wider community by fostering positive relationships with local primary schools and businesses.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 93300 Eur

Project Coordinator

Titus Salt School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Amandus-Abendroth Gymnasium