Learning environments where modern languages flourish

Opportunities for learners

Working on a whole school approach to learning environments has led to changes in the relationship between students and adults in the school, because learners have been given responsibilities. This clearly has an impact on the use of languages by giving learners more opportunities to become language users in real life situations. This grid lists examples from EOL-schools where students can take over real responsibilities.

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Du sens multiple des langues

The headteacher describes with clear words all the mechanisms that have made it possible to develop a global language project by progressively involving all teachers. He also explains how language education contributes to the development of soft skills that young people need. This interview is a great illustration of the bidirectional challenge of EOL to develop learning environments for and through languages.

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Déployer EOL dans son établissement

In this video, the headteacher walks through his school to illustrate the impact of EOL. He explains how all students have been progressively involved and how this creates an overall dynamic for the school. This school has, for example, developed its language offer by offering Turkish as a foreign language in addition to English, German and Spanish.

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Importance of family languages

Developing a global approach to languages means taking into account not only the languages offered at school but also the languages that are part of the learners’ personal repertoires. This presentation shows some of the most important aspects in taking into account family languages.

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Class newspaper

A class newspaper is an enjoyable tool to develop learning and social skills. The teacher highlights the learners’ initiative and its impact on the working atmosphere. Learners play a major role when it comes to setting up appropriate learning environments.

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Escape game multilingue

The Escape Game is a very motivating step for students. It promotes teamwork and ambition because it takes place in a limited time. It also promotes the transfer of knowledge and skills. At the Charles Eisen College in Valenciennes, the teachers developed a multilingual version on the theme of cinema and in partnership with the City Cinema Festival. This is how a simple approach based on a cultural partnership can support plurilingual and intercultural learning.

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Home in language

Home-in-Language is a school-based targeted initiative to respond to the needs of learners with different home languages. Home-in-Language recognises, values and validates the plurilingual biographies of migrant students. Respect for students’ identities is essential for their emotional, social and cognitive development. The project supports welcoming and inclusive attitudes to diversity. Home-in-Language harnesses the potential of informal learning by involving trained volunteers within and outside of school as mentors. In effect, the project secures a broader support infrastructure to deliver a more supportive learning environment.

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Teaching Italian in Turkey

This example gives an inside view on the situation of Italian as a foreign language in Turkey. This presentation explains that EOL can be used at various levels (learning, teacher training, language learning policy, international cooperation etc.) to support diversity in language teaching and learning.

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E-Duplex

eDuplex is an international project lead by the Deutsch-Französisches Gymnasium in Freiburg (Germany) with partner schools in Germany and France. Students have to present to a non-specialist audience a scientific concept in two languages. This event-based project fosters a transversal-based approach of linguistic and communicative objectives which is essential for learning environments where modern languages flourish.

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Compte-rendu de visite d’un collège EOL

This report shows how a school is gradually using its full potential (projects, facilities, partnerships, expertise, etc.) to develop learning environments where modern languages flourish.

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Bilan d’étape d’établissements EOL à Dijon

This report shows that the strategies are different depending on the school. Each school builds on its strengths to meet the students’ needs and develop optimised learning environments. The blue parts give concrete examples of the steps taken by the teams.

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Tutoriel pour Kahoot

The use of digital tools has a great impact on the language learning environment. This document presents some possible uses of the Kahoot website to create quizzes, facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary or solve intercultural enigmas.

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Parlement des jeunes

The European initiative of a youth parliament helps to develop citizenship and a sense of commitment among young people. This project shows how languages and international cooperation can contribute to the general education of pupils. This example illustrates how the combination of formal and non-formal learning helps to strengthen language learning environments.

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Bilan du projet EOL

In this document, the team tries to evaluate the impact of the actions carried out within the framework of the EOL project: involvement of the actors (in particular the parents), inclusion of the family languages, impact on the linguistic competences of the students, interdisciplinary approach, etc. This document seems perfectly transferable to other school contexts to assess the quality of language learning environments.

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Débats citoyens

Classroom debates contribute to both the motivation of students and the use of languages in context. Classroom debates make it possible to use and enrich content from other disciplines, particularly within an intercultural perspective.

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Escape Game

Serious games are among the most effective and motivating activities to promote the use of language in context. Escape games place students under a time constraint to solve puzzles in teams. This principle allows for ample creativity for the teachers to adapt the game to the content of the course and the needs of the students. Escape games are also adapted to the activities to be carried out during a school exchange.

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Semaine des langues et stage à l’étranger

Organising a language week is a great opportunity to promote partnerships and international mobility. In the Lycée Lumière, the language week is reflected both in the promotion of work placements abroad and in the reorganisation of space and time: European meals in the canteen, multilingual displays, exhibitions, translation competitions, etc. This event intensifies and enhances the language learning environment.

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Marque-pages

During the languages’ week, many creative activities are offered to students. The idea of the bookmark is simple to implement and responds to both a creative aspiration and the desire to strengthen the place of literature in the language class. Students create a bookmark from their favourite book. Then they present this book to the class. The other students then have to guess which bookmark matches the book and justify their choice in a foreign language.

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Osons les langues

“Osons les langues” is the title of Matisse Collège Language Week during which students participate in workshops to discover new languages. They enjoy an international meal and join teams in a game about the European Union. This example shows how an event can create beautiful synergies around languages.

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One Irish primary school’s response to linguistic diversity

This brilliant presentation offers various examples of the way to include learners’ home languages in order to set up a favourable learning environment. The document reveals many advantages of inclusive approaches to language diversity.

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Bilan du projet EOL à Rouen

This report underlines common strategies developed by an upper secondary school and a vocational school. The two schools used their complementary features to set up a learning environment where modern languages flourish. This document explains the project from the point of view of the vocational school.

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Les langues contre le racisme

This review of the work carried out at Wolf College shows the complementarity of the actions undertaken in the different courses. Developing optimized learning environments means also fostering synergies and convergences between lessons.

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Journée plurilingue et interculturelle

In order to facilitate the transition from the collège (lower secondary school) to the lycée (upper secondary school), the Lycée Evariste Gallois organises every year a plurilingual and intercultural day to welcome students and teachers from the collèges. Everyone participates in the organisation of workshops and concerts: students, teachers, parents. This approach raises the awareness of all stakeholders to the diversity of languages and cultures but also to the importance of intercultural competences.

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Multilingual physics

These are examples of multilingual practical work done in the physical sciences class. The use of several languages facilitates access to scientific content and changes the relationship between the teacher and the students. Developing multilingual uses in all disciplines facilitates the emergence of optimised learning environments in which languages contribute to the success of all.

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Jeu de piste plurilingue

The transition from primary school to secondary school is one of the most delicate transitions in a student's school career. André Chénier Collège proposes exploiting the diversity of languages to offer primary school students a fun activity to discover the collège.

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Ingénierie EOL en France

This video shows how the EOL project was supported and developed in France. The aim is to show how schools have gradually developed a global approach to language issues, how actors have been encouraged to share their reflections and how the resources produced have been valued as part of an online training course.

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Learning English on YouTube

YouTube can be an effective learning channel for new generations. Schools should take into account this possibility either to offer content in a different way or to train student to share their knowledge and skills with others through video presentations. YouTube and the wider Internet should be part of the way we conceive of language learning environments.

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International biology

As part of an Erasmus + project, the Félix le Dantec High School has developed a partnership with several European countries. The videos and the report show the trip to the Azores to discover the Aloe vera plant. This project shows how much mobility and partnerships motivate students and produce teaching content by crossing sciences and languages. Here is the online presentation of the project: https://prezi.com/uawadnmn_85d/european-section-trip-in-sao-miguel-island-azores/

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Rap sample

This project shows how language education can contribute to general education aims. Enabling students to write their own rap and perform it in front of an audience addresses two issues at the same time –the students’ lack of motivation and monolingual habits.

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Cooperation between the school and its surrounding territory

Linguistic diversity offers great opportunities to address citizenship in form of intercultural experience. The Council of Europe promotes linguistic diversity. “Europe is multilingual and all its languages are equally valuable modes of communication and expressions of identity; the right to use and to learn one’s language(s) is protected in Council of Europe Conventions ”. Territorial cooperation is an excellent way to develop linguistic diversity.

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Linguistic diversity

The American psychologist David Ausubel wrote: “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly ”. This is certainly true for language education and for the design of adequate learning environments.

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Learning with songs

Music is a kind of universal language that bridges cultures and encourages the discovery of other languages. Music allows you to share traditions but also to open students up to the contemporary culture of the languages they learn. Music should be part of all strategies for the development of language learning environments.

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Enriching learning environments

The following grid lists some of the projects and strategies developed by PlurCur or EOL partner schools which enriched the language learning environments. These initiatives are classified by their sustainability (from unique to lifelong approaches) and their degree of formality (from non-formal to formal approaches).

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Education through languages

Languages are at the heart of education. This is the reason why educational issues should be essential when it comes to design language learning environments.

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Presentation of the corpus of online resources

EOL is a participative project that bases its development on collective intelligence. To this end, an online resource deposit platform has been set up to enable partner schools to share their work with all the stakeholders involved. This text proposes an analysis of the deposited resources.

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English as a language of communication

This example shows how an EOL partner school made its first steps into EOL. Taking into account the specific needs of the students and teachers is one the main success factors.

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Immersive learning pathways

Among the European network of EOL partner schools, there are some schools which provide their students an immersive language learning environment. Here is what a specific school within the network set up in order to guarantee the quality of learning environments and multilingual and intercultural pathways.

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Behavior education and language development

Citizenship belongs to the wider field of general education aims which face different threats: poorly defined catch-all areas which end up not being really addressed by any subject; the risk of a technical approach disconnected from real life situations; best practice thinking without adequate reflection on contextual needs or opportunities, etc. Language education has all the necessary features to prevent these threats as long as it takes into account the added value of language diversification. Linguistic and cultural diversity offers great opportunities to address citizenship in form of intercultural experience.

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Transversal use of EOL

EOL is a process. It aims at helping stakeholders to set up their own local strategies and international projects through processes of individual and collective agency. As such, EOL offer complementary approaches to the widespread culture of immediate indicators which is focused more on standards and results than on mechanism and pathways. EOL’s symbiotic approach can be transferred to various areas of education system such as innovation in education or citizenship building.

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Professional development through EOL

EOL offers a flexible concept which can be adapted to many contexts and policy purpose. This example from Greece also helped to improve the various tools of EOL.

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Bilan EOL à Versailles Pilotage à l’échelle territoriale

This report provides an analysis of the implementation and impact of the EOL project at the territorial and four-year levels (2016-2019). The “académie de Versailles” has set up the EOL project on two sites: the lycée des Sept mares in Maurepas and the lycée Evariste Galois in Sartrouville. Each high school has associated all sector collèges and many partners.

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Les langues des signes au service de l’inclusion

In this kindergarten, supporting a disabled child with sign language generates an opportunity for inclusion, empowerment of all children and deepening language learning. The use of sign language helps to create an environment conducive to all learning.

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Augmented reality

Augmented reality makes it possible to give a communicative objective to students' productions. This reinforces the creative and technical dimension of the language learning environment and contributes to student motivation.

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