Multilingualism has been identified as playing a key role in fostering mobility and linguistic diversity in the EU by the European Commission’s article “About multilingualism policy” and the Council Recommendation on Key competences for Lifelong Learning. Language learning is therefore one of the top educational priorities in the EU, calling for innovative, inclusive and multilingual teaching methods allowing for students to speak two additional languages to their mother tongue. Language learning is a discipline that calls for regular practice and immersion in order to develop the four main language skills, namely: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Language teachers are always on the lookout for innovative activities allowing them to work on those skills with their students. In the past few years, Escape Rooms (ER) have generated a growing interest among teachers as they are indeed engaging and immersive. Nevertheless, the existing solutions are often expensive, only in digital format, or do not fit the needs of teachers in terms of quality and/or accessibility. In order to really help teachers, this project will provide ready-made content as well as practical advice on how to implement such activities in the classroom for language learning. The goal of this project is to foster multilingualism and diversity in the EU by promoting good practices to implement ER in language courses. These games will consist of a scenario in which the students will develop their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills in the foreign language by solving language riddles, decoding written and audio messages, communicating in the target language and exploring an environment filled with challenges and clues in order to escape a room. Our project’s approach is to guide language teachers and equip them with the knowledge and tools related to the creation of Escape Rooms. By using ER, we are creating a scenario in which students will be surrounded by elements allowing them to practice the target language. The experience will therefore be totally immersive. To create engagement, the students will have a motivating goal: to escape the room in which they have been locked, to open a chest, or to save the classroom, by working together and solving riddles. In addition to the four main necessary skills to practice a foreign language, two other aspects are important to include in this project: The first is cultural heritage. As a language always reflects a community's way of thinking and culture, it remains essential to teach students about the culture behind the language they are learning. With Escape Rooms, this can easily be integrated in the scenarios by choosing relevant figures as characters and by creating an environment that is true to the cultural reality. The second is the development of language teachers’ digital skills. The project will train them on the use of different resources in order to understand why and how to practically implement the use of ER in their language courses. Among those resources, some ICT tools will be recommended and tested by the partners, such as QR codes, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Voice Recognition, etc. The intellectual outputs developed in this project will be: • A booklet “ER and languages: a perfect match?” • A creation box with tools, resources and inspirations • A collection of 300 enigmas • A guide “Animation of a pedagogical ER for language education” • The creation of 50 ER scenarios
1. As multilingualism is one of the key competences encouraged by the Council Recommendation, this project will bring an innovative, creative approach to learn new languages with the use of escape rooms. These games allow students to develop not only their language skills, but also their key competencies for lifelong learning. 2. Project aims to represent the European linguistic diversity through the creation of escape rooms for language learning adapted to CEFR levels. 3. This project empowers teachers by developing their ICT skills and promoting the use of innovative teaching methods, both in and out of the classroom. During the creation of the ER games partners will explore the use of new technologies such as QR Codes, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence to create their scenarios. Different tools will be presented with the goal to mainstream their use for language learning. 4. In the same way, these Escape Rooms will be specially designed to be inclusive for all students, even for those with specific learning disorders like dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD etc.
This project focuses on further strengthening key competences in language acquisition, focusing on the use of new methods and technologies to support learning thanks to using and creating escape games. In addition to basic skills in reading, maths and science, the ability of citizens to communicate in at least two languages besides their mother tongue has been identified as a key priority in the EU cooperation in the « Education & Training 2020 » framework. To achieve this goal, the European Commission adopted in 2008 the Communication ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’ (COM(2008) 566 final), which was followed by a Council Resolution on a European strategy for multilingualism (2008/C 320/01). The ability to speak foreign languages promotes the intercultural dialogue in Europe, improves employability and facilitates the free movement of workers across the EU. For all these reasons, the partners gathered to develop an engaging and inclusive foreign language teaching practice for both teachers and learners.