In line with EU language policy and its efforts to promote mobility and intercultural understanding, language acquisition and multilingualism represent important elements of the EU’s language policy, promoting the knowledge of 2 languages in addition to the mother tongue. In line with the linguistic background of the EU policy the project “LanGuide” is focused on internationalised education, growing use of digital learning, and supporting the creation of flexible learning pathways in line with users’ needs and objectives. Referring to this, the objectives of the project “LanGuide” are to build an open access students/teachers/administrative staff centered guidance tool for improving language knowledge and supporting the acquisition of language knowledge through the language guidance tool. Within the project we will promote the internationalization of the higher education programmes and the usage of up-to-date IT technologies. The project LanGuide joins 6 project partners coming from five linguistic and geographical parts of Europe. The project partners gather 6 universities specialised in language acquisition and software development. Within the project activities we will joint develope a common methodology for the preparation of guidelines focused on language for specific purposes (LSP). The developed methodology will be implemented in the preparation of language resources, covering 3 levels of difficulty, for preselected LSP fields for English. The developed resources will be included in the language guidance tool software and mobile app. In the final part of the project, resources for preselected LSP fields for the languages of the project partners will be included into the software and mobile app. Among the project activities we mention also the preparation of the webpage of the project and the online publication of a monograph, gathering at one place the project activities, implementation and results. The methodology used in carrying out the project is divided into the realisation of the project activities and is mainly focused onto the preparation of a common methodology that will be used for the preparation of guidelines focused on the acquisition of language for specific purposes (LSP) for different fields, difficulty levels and languages. The universal methodology will be applied on English language and the languages of the participating countries. After the preparation of the methodology, inclusion of resources into the language tool there will be a testing phase where the target and control group are involved. The result of the project is the preparation a software and mobile app for language guidance for English and the languages of the project partners. Among the project results we have to mention also the website that will be designed jointly by all participants and will be hosted on the website of UP (Slovenia), the preparation of resource materials for English and the languages of the project partners, and the preparation of a universal methodology for further development and implementation of the project. The impact of the project is the actual usage and promotion of the language tool (software and mobile app) by target groups (HE institutions, teachers, students, administrative staff) on local, regional, national and international level. Among the long term benefits we recall the universal methodology that can be applied to varied languages and LPS fields, as well as the sustainability of the materials, methodology, software, app and monograph, all freely available on the website of the project.
Our main goal was to provide an open access mobile tool, which would support and guide acquisition of language knowledge and communication skills, based on newly developed didactic methodology and usage of newly designed software available on the ubiquitous mobile devices. Such a resource can encourage and facilitate internationalization of higher education mobility programmes. At the same time, we wished to develop a didactic framework, which can be transferred to learning of any other language beyond the languages of the partnership, namely, Croatian, Italian, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish, and English, as well as to any other specialist domain beyond Academic language, Secretarial language, language for Mobility and language for IT, the domains dealt with within the LanGuide project. Consequently, the aim of the LanGuide project was twofold: a research based didactic framework for mobile language learning and a bank of language exercises for each language based on the new pedagogic insights and exploitable on the new LanGuide App. Both the pedagogy and the innovative software result from interdisciplinary cooperation and reflect the diversity of the European tertiary institutions.
The main aim of the LanGuide project is to support and contribute to the EU language policies of promoting interculturality, multilingualism, digital learning, so as to enhance intercultural understanding and multilingual practices within the internationalisation of tertiary education, within which a growing need for digital learning has been perceived. In keeping with these objectives, the LanGuide Mobile App provides an open access mobile tool for students, teachers and administrative staff who wish to pursue flexible learning pathways in line with their own needs and learning style in their effort to study new languages or upgrade knowledge of previously acquired languages. In order to achieve such a result, the LanGuide project involved experts specialised in language acquisition and software development from 6 partner European universities. Together we developed the LanGuide App, a resource based on common language learning methodology and accessible on a jointly designed language-learning platform. Thus, language learners are offered an innovative tool to acquire language knowledge in some specialist domains, essential for mobility abroad, with ease and at their convenience.