PRISIJUNGIMAS
Newsletter nº 1 – July 2021

Lie 13, 2021 | Newsletter

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Newsletter nº 1 - July 2021
TEMPLATE’s FIRST STEPS

TEMPLATE started with its kick off meeting in October 2020. Due to the global pandemic, the meeting took place online. Members from the five partner countries met to organize and discuss the first steps to take.

Agreements, meetings and time lines were scheduled, and the first deliverables were organised. We reviewed the aims and goals to be achieved, and the dissemination was discussed. Moreover, the logo was born and TEMPLATE went public through its website and social media.  Loads of work done!

In the first phases of the project, we prepared the theoretical background underlying the overall professional development programme.

The main focus of these phases was to discuss the potential of ICT for supporting language learning from a plurilingual perspective, as well as to equip the teachers with the competences needed to design and implement technology-mediated plurilingual language learning tasks by offering them more information about the task-based and project-based language learning, the concept of plurilingual education and translanguaging.

In February 2021, the first Meet and Greet meeting took place and it was a great success. Participant teachers from five different countries attended. 

They were introduced to the project and explained what their participation would consist of. Their tasks to develop, their time commitment and the training they would receive were some of the points the meeting dealt with. 
SURVEY RESULTS

The first survey was conducted among 212 primary and secondary teachers from 13 different countries. The participants were surveyed about their understanding of technology and plurilingualism in the classroom and about their own practices.

The data were collected and the German team presented an overview analysis of the results. The findings will be presented in the next Eurocall 2021, which will take place in Paris on August the 26th, by our colleagues Elisa Corino (from Italian partner)  and Fanny Meunier (from Belgian partner).
https://whova.com/web/euroc1_202108/
Here are some highlights of the results. As you can see in the graphs below, data show most of our respondents were in-service teachers, but we also counted on pre-service and CLIL teachers. The target students, as you can see, are mainly primary and secondary, although some university teachers wanted to participate too. 
FOCUS GROUPS

Last June, teachers had the opportunity to meet online in international or national focus groups, and share their insights regarding technology and  plurilingualism in the classroom. 

Primary and Secondary teachers from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Lithuania and Spain were asked about their opinions and current practices in their English classes; about teacher training, the use of textbooks and the use of different languages when teaching. Some very interesting reflections on their practices and experiences came up during the interviews. Here we leave you some highlights!
“I think that we usually ask our students to be open to new languages and to new experiences. So, we have to be an example, we have to do the same.” (Italian teacher in secondary school)
“I would like to get some examples of probably models or recordings showing the actual work with this or that platform that we can copy. For example, we can perform the same lesson according to the plan and then we can discuss after it" (Lithuanian teacher in primary school)
 "I don’t like translating but I try to compare the languages." (Belgian teacher in primary school)
WORK IN PROGRESS
After the last international meeting on July 16th, all the teams are setting the next steps  to prepare for the forthcoming Transnational meeting and Multiplier event that will take place in Spain in November.

Our international partners are getting ready for the next meeting in October where the teaching modules will be discussed and our online platform presented. The teams will also discuss the details and programme of the first multiplier event in November, which we are very excited about as it will be our first face-to-face meeting.
MEET THE TEAM
This month, Elisa Corino (Italy) (Project coordinator)
Dear all,

As coordinator of TEMPLATE it is a pleasure to inaugurate this newsletter and the presentation of the wonderful group of people who are working on this project.

So, what about me? I am based in Turin, a beautiful city where you can find nice liberty buildings, the world’s oldest museum devoted to ancient Egyptian culture, very good chocolate, and a well known football team (which I won’t mention, as I am a supporter of the rival one!).

I’ve been related to the school world ever since, as my mother was a teacher and I basically spent my childhood playing under the desk while she was meeting colleagues and planning her classes. So, becoming an educator was the most natural path to me. And I did it.
 
Now I am an associate professor in Educational Linguistics at the University of Turin and I do research in applied linguistics, language acquisition, language teaching methodologies, along with corpus linguistics and translation.  My current research interests involve plurilingual approaches (apart from TEMPLATE I am involved in a project on Intercomprehension within the European University Alliance UNITA), data-driven learning for LSP in the L1 class (linguaggispecialistici.i-learn.unito.it), CLIL and the use of ICT in foreign language teaching and learning (MALL and CALL), learner corpus research (I have been responsible for the Italian learner corpus VALICO -www.valico.org -  since its first release in the early 2000).

But what I like most is the field work, the action research project carried out with teachers where the theory can be put into practice, data can be collected and analyzed, and good practices can be established to effectively improve and develop the teaching and learning process.

I am really looking forward to working with you all, so contact us and… see you on the TEMPLATE field!
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