The overall objective of the project was to improve digital language teaching and virtual exchange in the participating countries – and the rest of the EU member states in the next couple of years. By implementing the project, it has achieved the following specific and innovative objectives: 1. To develop new teaching guidelines for digital language learning 2. To develop easily accessible methods for virtual language exchange 3. To establish a sustainable organisational model anchored at the regional level. By completing these objectives, this project have developed and created sought-after new knowledge in how to implement and use specific digital and virtual tools and methods in the day-to-day foreign language teaching. This need for new models, guidelines and knowledge in the area stems directly from the foreign language teachers and headmasters (a bottom-up approach) and this has improved the foreign language teaching as well as made the foreign language subjects more attractive to pupils.
The project stems from the challenges facing foreign languages in Denmark, as well as in the rest of Europe, where there is a shortage of language teachers and an increasing number of young people are opting out of language subjects in upper secondary and higher education. The foreign languages are struggling - some examples from Denmark: - Upcoming shortage of language teachers for primary and secondary school and secondary education - 76% of students in secondary education didn’t have the possibility to choose the foreign language they wanted - 45% of students in secondary school did not have the option to choose French.