Top-quality language provision (knowledge and skills) for university students is a sine qua non for the implementation of social ideals, espoused by the European Union and indispensable in the global village. Student mobility, competitive job markets, development of pan-European economy and geo-political cohesion all require that university graduates be offered every possible chance to master a shared communication tool, a contemporary lingua franca. To ensure that English successfully continues to perform the role of a communicative and informative system, able to meet the increasingly complex everyday discourse demands, the teaching goals, techniques and didactic resources all need to undergo a methodological overhaul. Our model addresses these issues, by proposing content-based packages for EHE (English for Higher Education) instruction, conducive to the development of “education for citizenship”. To respond to the most pressing communicative needs of united Europe, this project looks at English language tuition. Should the model prove successful, however, it is applicable to other natural languages and competence levels. This is so because a foreign language is taught through a carefully selected sequence of content units, each reflecting a different academic domain and an appropriately adjusted lexico-grammatical inventory. In this sense it is unlike any other approach to foreign language provision. In a CLIL course (Content-and-Language-Integrated Learning) content is limited to ONE academic subject. In a similar vein ESP (English for Specific Purposes) tuition, along with most other bespoke FL (Foreign Language) courses, gives as much focus as possible to a specialised lexis from ONE academic domain, EAP (English for Academic Purposes) is genre-specific without a domain focus, while general English courses by definition lack a specific academic angle, as they are skill-oriented. TE-Con3 teaches through diversified academic subjects, accessible to non-specialists and controlled for grammatical complexity. Task-design leans heavily towards CLIL and M. Lewis’s Lexical Approach: multimodal and linguistically engaging resources, which maintain a triple focus on content/cognition, culture/communication and learning skills. The role of grammar in the model is determined (following M. Lewis) by the priority of grammaticalized lexis over lexicalised grammar. Content and language both carry equal weight for assessment purposes; content does not serve as an excuse for practising grammar patterns, it is a major factor contributing to the overall success rate of course participants. The range of academic topics covered, while broad, is not random and reflects the STEAM paradigm, an asset in a European marketplace and a factor promoting active European citizenship, above all in its economic and cultural dimensions. The five academic domains, used in the project to develop sample lesson scenarios for the purpose of testing the model’s applicability include: a) architecture, b) art and media, c) automotive engineering, d) biomedical sciences and health communication, e) geography. The manual for teachers, one of the project’s outputs, will contain essential background reading, familiarizing instructors with the potentially new subject areas in an accessible, user-friendly way. The TE-Con3 materials, both for teachers and students, will be available as an open-access resource on a multimedia platform (MUL-TECON), designed for the purposes of the project. Given the character of the project, the reliance on modern technologies is not only desirable, it is in fact, unavoidable. The use of multimedia and an online educational platform (with a friendly interface and a range of interactive tools) ensures the increased availability of project materials, as well as adds to the appeal of the resources. Thereby, it positively impacts students' motivation and offers teachers ready-made tasks and methodological guidelines. The digital angle will also be reflected in the types and formats of tasks and activities: some of the tasks will be CALL-based (computer-assisted language learning) and draw on the insights from corpus linguistics (e.g. the use of concordancers to establish word patterns). The partner universities will monitor the MUL-TECON platform for three years after the completion of the project, and promote the model at conferences and seminars, so as to extend the project’s lifetime, and reach broader audiences in European academic institutions. A high-quality foreign language teaching model, digitally enhanced, addressing the needs of all major stake-holders, promotes a holistic development of students; teaching them to combine skills in different areas and to think ‘outside the box’. It is an ideal model to be implemented both in distance and blended learning, which may soon become a major advantage amidst growing concern for the shape of European education in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
The main objectives included: a) developing an innovative model for EHE teaching, distinct from the predominant present-day models (see background for more information); b) providing real-life academic contexts from a variety of disciplines (the essence of multidisciplinary teaching); c) providing viewpoints from different cultural perspectives (the model is culture-sensitive and glocal); d) promoting social skills and collaboration - adequate selection of tasks, activities and assignments, focus on group work, in-group problem-solving; e) incorporating technology in language-and-content learning (e.g. online resources, corpus-based tasks); f) designing materials that effectively promote inclusion (tasks appropriate for different learning styles, based on a range of modalities (video input, graphics, web search, oral reporting, etc), allowing students to take ownership of their learning experience; g) prioritising content-related work and content-based grammar learning; h) to disseminate the Te-CON3 materials in HE Institutions.
There is a growing gap between the needs of university graduates in 21-century Europe and the methodological goals of most language teaching approaches. In the global village English has become an irreplaceable communicative tool, an informative system and a carrier of multiple (all too often conflicting) cultural views. Language learning needs to be inseparable from academic content, across a number of academic disciplines. That expectation was confirmed in a survey that we carried out prior to applying for the project and was later confirmed in a large-scale survey, conducted as part of IO1. Yet, multiple academic foci (the essence of the pluriliteracies approach) are missing from the available teaching models. In a CLIL course (Content-and-Language-Integrated Learning) content is limited to ONE academic subject. In a similar vein ESP (English for Specific Purposes) tuition puts as much focus as possible on specialised lexis from ONE academic domain, EAP (English for Academic Purposes) is genre-specific without a domain focus, while general English courses by definition lack a specific academic angle, as they are skill-oriented.