Learning English through fun

It is a free ap­pli­ca­tion that we have cre­ated to help im­prove uni­ver­sity stu­dents’ read­ing com­pre­hen­sion in Eng­lish. When you first ac­cess it, you take a test and, ac­cord­ing to the re­sult, you start at B1 or B2 level of the Eu­ro­pean com­mon ref­er­ence level for lan­guages. Next, you have an aca­d­e­mic text in Eng­lish, which should be read in a lim­ited time and then do a se­ries of minigames re­lated to the con­tent of the text. The ac­tiv­i­ties are based on read­ing strate­gies. For ex­am­ple, know­ing how to scan a text, and find a phrase. When you make a mis­take, the game gives you ad­vice about read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, as the idea is for col­lege stu­dents to get used to get­ting the gist of an aca­d­e­mic text in one look, some­thing that they find dif­fi­cult to do.

Most ap­pli­ca­tions for learn­ing lan­guages have some game as­pects. We use play­ing a lot, be­cause if not read­ing com­pre­hen­sion can be bor­ing. We wanted it to be fun. Play­ing is a good tool for learn­ing Eng­lish.

It was fi­nanced with 230,000 euros from the Eras­mus + K2pro­gramme, of the Eu­ro­pean Union. To ac­cess it, you need an al­liance with dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions from a min­i­mum of three mem­ber states, and to sub­mit a pro­ject that has to be ap­proved. In our case, the Rovira i Vir­gili Uni­ver­sity has worked with the Uni­ver­si­tat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Wyzsza Szkola Ling­wisty­czna of Czesto­chowa (Poland), the Con­sorci de Serveis Uni­ver­si­taris de Catalunya, the Amis­tad IT com­puter com­pany from Poland, and the Uni­ver­sitty of Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France). The core of The Art of Read­ing was cre­ated by the URV, which led the pro­ject, and the UAB, which was in charge of the texts.

It has an open con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS). This is an on­line ap­pli­ca­tion in which we in­tro­duced the texts, ac­tiv­i­ties, and so on. Be­cause we had lim­ited time and bud­get, we could not cover all aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­plines, so we de­cided to focus on the texts re­lated to the Fac­ulty of Ed­u­ca­tion. To over­come this lim­i­ta­tion, we have de­cided to offer the sys­tem to any fac­ulty that wishes to cre­ate their own app by en­ter­ing their own aca­d­e­mic texts. This will be free be­cause it has been made with pub­lic funds and with the idea that it is an open tool.

Yes. I have al­ready pre­pared to pre­sent the sec­ond part of the pro­ject. It in­volves adding more lan­guages: Span­ish, French, Japan­ese and Ger­man, and im­prov­ing some el­e­ments of the game.

It is very low, al­though in Cat­alo­nia the level of Eng­lish is quite good, com­pared to the rest of Spain. We have not even been able to have stu­dents get to uni­ver­sity with a B2 level, or fin­ish uni­ver­sity with this level. The method­ol­ogy fails in schools, where there are still teach­ers who teach Eng­lish with­out being spe­cial­ists. In nurs­eries, chil­dren should al­ready speak and sing in Eng­lish. Lately, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment is mak­ing ef­forts to im­prove this sit­u­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, I am teach­ing stu­dent teach­ers, who will be fab­u­lous teach­ers, but who are not able to have a con­ver­sa­tion in Eng­lish.

Thanks to the pro­gramme of the URV Solidària, we have made a ver­sion of the app for chil­dren in a school in Nairobi, Kenya, to help them learn Swahili. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­ject, we have Ali­cia Ndegwa, a teacher from that school, who did a mas­ter’s de­gree at the URV last year. She told us that they have a big prob­lem there, be­cause chil­dren who get to school speak one of the many lan­guages in the coun­try, but don’t know Swahili, which is the of­fi­cial lan­guage, and in­dis­pen­si­ble in order to in­te­grate well. Ali­cia made the con­tent in Swahili for the app, and we’ll soon travel to Kenya with a part­ner from the URV, to visit the school, and buy the tablets for the chil­dren. We’ll also show teach­ers how to use the app and the best ways to play with the chil­dren. We would like this to be a seed, and to con­tinue to train other teach­ers, so this app could ex­pand as an open tool.