EngLife: Strengthening Teachers’ Digital Readiness for a Lifetime English Language Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

EngLife: Strengthening Teachers’ Digital Readiness for a Lifetime English Language Education

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemia has had a significant impact on the regular delivery of education. While it demonstrated how quickly online technological solutions can aid in times of crises, it also exposed the challenges teachers experience when online delivery is necessary. At the same time, language learning pedagogy, due its communicative nature of instruction, has not exploited technology as effectively as pedagogy in other disciplines. English language learning in secondary education is still largely oriented towards grammar and technical knowledge and students emerging from secondary education underachieve in real English communication. This contrasts with the fact that communicative knowledge of English in today’s globalised environment is necessary for personal and professional growth. Moreover, for most internet users who are not native English speakers, contact with English is unavoidable also in recreational online activities. EngLife stipulates that between the lesson-at-school environment (real or virtual) and the work-at-home environment there is a gap which can be used for English language learning if specific technologically-charged methodology is employed as part of a system. The EngLife partners performed an appropriate survey on teachers in their networks, which provided a Needs Analysis for the project. We identified a need to equip English language teachers in secondary education with digital skills allowing them to work effectively in their classrooms of today.

The Overall Objective of EngLife is to strengthen schools in preparing students to effectively communicate in English in the English-dominated professional and cultural space they will face in adulthood. To achieve this,
1) we must have teachers who are prepared to teach in a digitalising world: we plan to increase the capacity of teachers teaching English in secondary education to use education technology inside and outside of the classroom (Specific Objective One);
2) we must apply approaches suiting today’s students: we plan to produce, test and implement a new teaching and learning methodology, contributing to the knowledge development on innovative methods in language teaching & learning in a digital era (Specific Objective Two); and
3) we must assure that skill improvement is sustained: we plan to multiply skill-learning through the train-the-trainer EngLife Methodology Workshop to apply the methodology in diverse international and intercultural settings outside of the project thus contributing to the professional development of teachers and the English language pedagogy (Specific Objective Three).

The SMART goal of the project is to increase the professional capacity of 18 English language teachers to teach Juniors (14-17) in secondary education with the use of education technology and train these teachers to train other teachers to implement a comprehensive, innovative approach to language teaching, the EngLife Methodology in the course of the project. The EngLife project outputs include research on the English language acquisition potential among teens, innovative teaching and learning materials, a professional self-assessment tool for teachers, an online database of digital resources for teaching English, and a fully online, free course entitled “EngLife: Teaching English for a Lifetime”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 242687 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundacja Luminar & Country: PL

Project Partners

• CLV Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace z Oddzialami Dwujezycznymi im. Bohaterek Powstania Warszawskiego
• International School
• Bursa Il Milli Egitim Mudurlugu
• NORDIC EDTECH FORUM N8 MTÜ
• Platon m.e.p.e.
• Istituto Tecnico Tecnologico G. Malafarina
• John Daly Atlantic Language Galway Ltd