Conference: “SpeakApps: Tools and Tasks. Maximising learner speaking time”

Program

Intended for language teachers, the conference will take place from 10:00 until 14:00 at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans in Barcelona. Keynote presenters Joan-Tomàs Pujolà and Usoa Sol will begin the conference with their talks. Pujolà is a professor in the Department of Language and Literature Education at the University of Barcelona and coordinator of the Interuniversity Master’s programme in the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language at the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University. Sol is a primary and secondary English teacher at the Sant Gregori School in Barcelona, as well as a teacher trainer. Both will discuss approaches to the design of activities that foster students’ oral skills.

The day will continue with a presentation of SpeakApps made by several of the project’s principal partners, as well as by means of short video testimonials contributed by SpeakApps users. Participants will then be able to try out the tools from the perspective of both students and teachers in a series of practical workshops. The day will end with refreshments and an opportunity for participants to network and discuss the possible application of the tools in their own classrooms with the speakers and project.

The conference programme is available on the SpeakApps website. The event is free and open to the public, though participants must register before 12 December 2014 using the event’s online registration form.

Funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission, SpeakApps offers tools and free, open-source pedagogical resources designed to foster oral production and interaction in language teaching. The online tools Langblog, Tandem and Videochat provide students with opportunities to practice speaking and teachers with a means for giving more effective feedback. The tools are integrated in a Moodle-based Virtual Learning Environment, but are also compatible with other platforms.

The SpeakApps tools are open-source. This allows for them to be used, modified and adapted to whatever needs and environments teachers work in, whether in online, face-to-face or blended classrooms. There are currently materials in 11 languages — Catalan, English, Dutch, Polish, Gaelic, Swedish, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Croatian — and more are planned for the future.

The project is coordinated at the UOC and includes the participation of three other European partners: the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), Dublin City University (Ireland) and Jagellonian University (Poland). Associate partners include the Universities of Jyväskylä (Finland), Nice (France), Southern Denmark and Ruhr-Bochum (Germany) as well as the Polish Cultural Association Mikolaj Kopernik (Croatia), the Pere Closa Foundation and the Open Institute of Catalonia.