Speak English-MOOC – English Language MOOC to Improve Speaking Skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Speak English-MOOC – English Language MOOC to Improve Speaking Skills

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

In EU’s Commission Staff Working Document on Language Competences for Employability, Mobility and Growth, it is indicated that English is becoming de facto the first foreign language and is the most taught foreign language, both in Europe and globally, and plays a key role in daily life. However, according to the EACEA/Eurydice’s Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe the outcome of foreign language learning in Europe is poor and only four in ten pupils reach the ‘independent user’ level in the first foreign language, indicating an ability to have a simple conversation. Only one quarter attains this level in the second foreign language. Too many pupils do not reach the ‘basic user’ level which means that they are not able to use very simple language, even with support. At the same time, almost half of Europeans report that they are unable to hold a conversation in any language other than their mother tongue. Of all four language skills, which are reading, writing, listening and speaking, speaking is the most difficult to develop.
On the other hand, there are megatrends, external factors, transforming the world around us. Among these trends are the aging population, labour market shifts, skills mismatch and economic shifts all around the world, particularly in developed countries. These megatrends have implications on education as well. It necessitates development of the skills of existing employees as the skills demanded from them changes very fast. Therefore, relevant, affordable and flexible programs become popular for those group of people. Countries around the world have been making considerable efforts to accommodate the rising numbers of non-traditional and lifelong learners. However, expansion based on traditional models of educational provision has peaked in many countries and has sparked an interest in finding more versatile and cost-effective ways of meeting education needs. Distance education has, thus, emerged as an extremely important option. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a form of distance learning. They are massive in the sense they are open and free for anyone to participate in.
In fact, such innovative sources used in education aim at involving as many learners as in the learning process and contents, which is a shift happening in the recent years in the field of education: the teacher-learner power shift. This is also provided by the use of OERs to expand the learners’ access to the contents (Siemens, 2013).
MOOCs support the idea of distributed intelligence and LLL, open learning, open educational resources and represent a new generation of online education that encourages the development and delivery of courses that are massive, open, participatory (Perifanou, 2014). Within this perspective, they have been identified as “the most important trend in education” by the Horizon Report in 2013. (Horizon Shortlist Report, 2013). According to Shah (2017), around 20 million new learners signed up for their first MOOC in 2017, taking the total number of learners to 78 million. This growing interest opens big opportunities for Language Education. Language competences and intercultural skills are more than ever before key qualifications for every citizen nowadays in every part of the world. Foreign language skills are in much demand and the need for related online courses is widespread. At this point, Language MOOCs constitute an interactive language learning environment offering unlimited entry and addressing to vast numbers of participants.On the other hand, several research state that there are still many issues related to second language acquisition through MOOCs. Despite the enormous number of courses provided, the number of Language MOOC initiatives is relatively small compared to the number of learners.
In the light of aforementioned lack of language skills and the increasing importance of MOOCs in education, within the scope of Speak English- MOOC Project, our aim is to develop a 6-week language MOOC to improve adult learners’ practical speaking skills based on an in-depth analysis of their needs and to offer a platform to host the content prepared.
The content of the speaking lessons will be built upon tasks that reflect everyday situations and interactive contexts. Such a communicative stance echoes the basic premises of Transfer Appropriate Processing (TAP) in which information is best retrieved in situations that is similar to how it is processed. Since the aim of MOOCs is to guide learners communicate in the target language, situations similar to real life contexts would help them to transfer information and expressions they use in these situations into the actual speaking contexts in the outside world.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 143760 Eur

Project Coordinator

BARTIN UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID
• ANADOLU UNIVERSITY
• BEST INSTITUT FUR BERUFSBEZOGENE WEITERBILDUNG UND PERSONALTRAINING GMBH