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Innovación y Desarrollo Metodológico para la Enseñanza de Idiomas en un Entorno Rural
Start date: Jun 1, 2016, End date: May 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Official Language School (EOI) of Almendralejo is a public school run by the government of Extremadura (Spain), dedicated to the teaching and certification of foreign languages. We teach French, English and Portuguese in 6 courses and 3 levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. Our unified certification exams are valid nationwide and are related to the CEFR proficiency levels (A2, B1 and B2).Our student body is essentially adult, with extensive presence of teachers (18%), in a rural setting which needs to promote its European, multilingual and multicultural dimensions. As actors of an organization that fosters a community able to build bridges with the English, French and Portuguese speaking communities, we need to update, strengthen and consolidate our skills, resources and teaching tools. This will provide us with better mobility in Europe and on the international stage as well as with the resources and tools needed to design the future development of our language school.Thus, the needs of our center are related to three essential points:- Developing and promoting the use of new technologies in order to provide our students with greater access to the tools and resources needed to enable their language skill development.- Strengthening our teaching practice with teaching techniques and self-learning approaches so that students can overcome the difficulties evidenced, for example, in the mastery of oral skills and the development of intercultural competences.- Achieving greater mastery of methodological techniques in teacher training.OUR PROJECT WILL:1. Update the methodological and language skills of our teachers, by learning and observing the work of colleagues in other European countries. This will allow our teachers to meet the specific training needs of the different groups that make up our student body, adults in general and teachers in CLIL projects in particular.2. Find innovative methods to prepare the teachers of our school to increase the autonomy of the students, providing them with independent learning strategies.3. Improve the use of IT in our teaching practice, with the use of educational platforms, providing daily contact of the students with the target language and so overcoming the space barriers of a largely rural setting.PARTICIPANTS:Being a school project linked to an internationalization strategy and long-term renewal, in a first stage, it is primarily carried out by 7 teachers, with the support and guidance of the entire faculty, school board and management team. The participants belong to the departments of French (2) English (3) and Portuguese (2). They have wide experience in the different stages of education and are active in developing the educational quality of our school and that of the Official Language School regional network, through their participation in training sessions, workshops and school innovation.ACTIVITIES:We believe that direct contact with other educational settings, methodologies and tools, by attending courses and job shadowing, will allow us to address our needs from a European perspective.The suggested training activities are organized by three institutions renowned in the field of specialized foreign language ​​teaching and teaching innovation. The courses are designed to enable us to learn new teaching techniques and to use IT in the classroom, enriching the school faculty with the observation of teaching in other countries. We have decided that only one participant will attend each activity and will share the results with the other members of the project.METHODS, RESULTS, IMPACT AND FUTURE:We were supported by the school faculty in the process of documentation, reflection, analysis and development of a European mobility project covering the needs and objectives set forth in the development plan of the center. Lines of work were agreed upon based on criteria of quality, equity, transparency and sustainability.The knowledge, skills and attitudes that the participants will acquire - broadly detailed in the project- will have an effect on our classes, on our students’ classes and on their autonomy to study and maintain the curiosity to keep learning, winning multilingual dimension as European citizens. Likewise, due to the multilingual dimension of our project, it will also influence the local community, increasing the business opportunities of exporting companies in the area, which will have workers with better foreign language skills.The achievement of our goals will allow us to carry out future actions which also justify our project: exporting the knowledge acquired to other schools through our students who are also teachersthe use of digital platforms in the daily practice of the language, building up students’ autonomy; and offering, from our experience, job shadowing positions on platforms such as eTwinning or Epale.
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