Many thanks to those of you who sent me an email commenting on my previous post. Actually, it may be quite encouraging to know that other teachers are having similar experiences and problems. Moreover, sharing our experiences can have a positive impact on our practices.

Today I’d like to reflect with you on another way of promoting our learner’s autonomy: linking classroom learning with individual and cooperative learning.

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In our MOLAN project closing conference a couple of weeks ago someone took me by surprise. It was Day Two, all of us following the swing of the formal-PowerPoint-enhanced presentations informing us of aims, activities, and achievements that I felt swept into my childhood and teenage classes of English in a provincial town of central Spain in the early nineties. Thing is, when comparing what I was seeing and hearing with my school memories being nostalgic about the past was out of question. Three-hours three days per week and with neither the conversational method nor the task-based approach in my teachers’ mind it was the same old drudgery of grammar explanations, applied exercises in book, reading aloud, and responding in a quivering voice to a question my teacher put. I even remember lying sometimes; Read More

A very interesting article for our readers who can understand French is available on the website of the Agence nationale des usages des TICE. The article addresses the issue of learning with serious games – video games combining learning with entertainment. The impact of using serious games for learning a foreign language has been illustrated by Mark Peterson, professor of Linguistics at the University of Kyoto.

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eTwinning, the community for schools in Europe is part of Comenius, the EU programme for schools.

It has more than 117.000 active members and more than 4200 active projects.

This article highlights the eTwinning Groups: online groups already active are:

• Creative Classroom
• Social Inclusion
• Maths & Science Read More

Did we ever have doubts about it?

Some of you may already know how much I am in favour of using online learning communities and Web 2.0 tools to empower language learning and learners’ motivation.  So, imagine my enthusiasm to have the opportunity to spread the Word and announce the publication of the Pedagogical Innovation in New Learning Communities report! Read More

You dreamed about it, Richard Byrne made it!

Many of us are willing to create videos for language class projects, but until recently, it always seemed difficult to handle with all the aspects of this type of project: where can free public access images and sounds be found? How to deal with mixing tools? Where can tools for screen-casting be found?  The whole process seemed to require many different skills reserved to the “happy few” teachers who had contacts in the field of media.

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In a month’s time the International House London, an established language school with over fifty years of experience in providing language courses and teacher training programmes, will be holding its fourth Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference. Their spacious and fully-equipped campus near Covent Garden welcomes you on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 November to discuss the teaching of languages for business purposes and the usage of technology in the classroom –£50 for the two days. Friday’s talks, delivered in English, vary from sessions on technology in the language classroom and tips on how to cope with students unwilling to cooperate in communicative learning classes, to neuro-linguistic programming techniques to boost language learners’ confidence. Saturday’s workshops, delivered in the delegates’ target language, focus on Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish language teaching. Read More

The European Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) remains faithful to an annual conference, which this year is held by the University of Bordeaux, 8-11 September, under the theme ‘Languages, Cultures and Virtual Communities in CALL’.

Starting off in the mid 80s with a group of enthusiastic professionals setting up meetings and courses to promote the usage of computers in the classroom, the training of teachers, and the development of language-learning software, EUROCALL 2010 stands for a hallmark of the association and its successful progress. Read More

(Interview Part III)

Q: What are the success factors of internationalisation for your school?
A: The Tilff-project with Germany and Switzerland is a self-sponsored project. Costs are kept relatively low since we are self-catering. Therefore we don’t need to pay any external staff. All costs are divided among the participants. For this project no EU-sponsorship seems to be possible, although we keep on searching for the appropriate fundraising programmes. Our Comenius school partnership has been fully sponsored by EPOS, our national agency, covering all travel and accommodation costs. It goes without saying that all international projects together cost money: printing costs, ICT-equipment, promotional gifts, catering, travel costs etc., so clear and full support of the school management is an absolute necessity.

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Q: What initiative is your school most proud of??
A: It’s difficult to say: the Comenius school partnership has been a fantastic experience for our teachers and to a smaller extent to our pupils but definitely the Euroclass Project in Tilff is a more personal achievement, since we managed to adapt the original European Classes idea into our own situation and to our specific needs. For our pupils of technical education we made the framework less strict and more inviting to be creative in expressing their ideas, in presenting their own presentation work. All this reflects in the willingness to speak with new people, in a foreign language most pupils had so far only be using within classroom walls.

Q: How do pupils participate in the organisation? Read More