Context/background: The lack of proficiency in academic language for the study of the specialist sector often constitutes an obstacle to student mobility and may limit the acquisition of theoretical, technical and professional knowledge during the period of the Erasmus stay in the host institution. This is especially true in the field of Architecture and Construction (AC), where training covers a number of technical sub-fields which are often defined by professional practices, cultural traditions and legal frameworks which are specific to a given country. In such a scenario, while English is still widely used as a lingua franca, proficiency in the national language becomes crucial for removing linguistic and cultural barriers that can hinder the training/learning process and/or discourage student mobility across Europe. Objectives: The project aims at creating academic-professional language modules for French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish as a foreign language in the field of AC with a view to encourage student mobility and to improve the outcomes of mobility programs. Participants: The project sees participation of members of five Higher Education institutions with extensive teaching and research experience in the fields of Applied Linguistics, Teaching Foreign Languages, Corpus Linguistics and Language Learning/Teaching Technology: University “G.d’Annunzio” (UdA), Chieti-Pescara (Italy); Masaryk University (MU), Brno (Czech Republic); Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), Madrid (Spain); University of Bordeaux Montaigne (UBM), Bordeaux (France); Polotsk State University (PSU), Polotsk (Belarus). One private enterprise, Internet Web Solutions (IWS), based in Málaga (Spain), is the IT partner of the project, already active in several Strategic Partnerships projects for the development of open-access resources. Activities: The project will develop in two main stages. In the first stage (Intellectual Output 1), consultation with (academic and professional) stakeholders will allow mapping of AC sub-fields and communicative settings which currently constitute an impediment to student and professional mobility. The results of this consultation will inform the creation of language corpora (i.e., digital collections of texts) comprising FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN, RUSSIAN and SPANISH texts representative of professional and academic communication in AC. In the second stage (Intellectual Output 3), each partner university will develop innovative language teaching modules for AC in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, which will be made freely available online for testing and subsequent use by mobility students at partner Universities. Throughout the project, IT partner IWS will develop, test and update the Open Educational Resources (OER) platform which will be used to distribute resources created within SEAH (Intellectual Output 2). Methodology: The project relies on the use of a variety of methods at each stage, including: semi-automatic creation and annotation of language corpora; automatic extraction of linguistic (lexical, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic) features to inform the learning materials; OER-Platform implementation and testing; survey-based methods for data collection and analysis. Results, impact and long term benefits: The innovative language learning materials created within the project will: - closely address the learning needs of trainees in the field as reported by involved stakeholders; - standardize training practices in this field across the five languages covered in the project, while still attending to culture-specific aspects; - promote students' motivation, autonomy and active engagement in the learning process through the use of a variety of media and IT tools as well as access to the electronic corpora; - guarantee free access to high-quality, research-informed training to the public. The methods, criteria and tools used for creating language learning materials will contribute to more effective and motivating training for mobility students, making them more confident in undertaking international efforts (in their training years and, subsequently, in their professional career). In the longer term, this will result in greater participation in (and more positive outcomes for) mobility programs, creating better career opportunities for young EU citizens. Free access to the Open Educational Resource (OER)-platform will also provide lifelong learning opportunities for professionals looking to collaborate with companies and individuals abroad, thus promoting use of the resources by larger pools of users beyond academia. Finally, the availability of multilingual language learning material can greatly contribute to enhancing visibility and more wide-spread knowledge of French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish architectural heritage and the professional practices associated with it, promoting national cultural valorization in international settings.
The innovative language learning materials created within the project aimed to: - closely address the learning needs of trainees in the field as reported by involved stakeholders; - standardize training practices in this field across the five languages covered in the project, while still attending to culture-specific aspects; - promote students' motivation, autonomy and active engagement in the learning process through the use of a variety of media and IT tools as well as access to the electronic corpora; - increase learners’ confidence when facing communication in the FL in academic and professional settings, thus encouraging and contributing to positive outcomes of student (and professional) mobility; - grant free access to high-quality, research-informed training to the public, thanks to an online ePlatform as the Open Education Resource (OER) for target groups to access the innovative language learning materials and resources developed within the project. More specifically, the teaching modules created allow target groups to acquire disciplinary and terminological notions related to the main thematic domains within AC and improve their comprehension/production of texts in various academic and professional scenarios.
The lack of proficiency in academic language for the study of the specialist sector often constitutes an obstacle to student mobility and may limit the acquisition of theoretical, technical and professional knowledge during the period of the Erasmus stay in the host institution. This is especially true in the field of Architecture and Construction (AC), where training covers a number of technical sub-fields which are often defined by professional practices, cultural traditions and legal frameworks which are specific to a given country. In such a scenario, while English is still widely used as a lingua franca, proficiency in the national language becomes crucial for removing linguistic and cultural barriers that can hinder the training/learning process and/or discourage student mobility across Europe. In this context, the project aimed at creating academic-professional language modules for French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish as a foreign language in the field of Architecture and Construction (AC) with a view to encouraging student mobility, improving the outcomes of mobility programs, as well as addressing the needs of a wide variety of AC professionals working in international settings.