Innovation in Language Learning

Adopting an experience-based approach in adult language learning, this course provides a design to empower students’ language skills in advanced English for Academic Purposes(EAP) courses through technology-based collaborative learning.

 Experience in offering and teaching EAP courses in Adult Education shows that learning is often delayed or hindered by a considerable large amount of personal factors brought in by the learners that mainly revolve around negative prior experience exposed to learning languages and their effects on the learners’ self-image (learner’s anxiety, low student self-esteem and insufficient language skills to keep up with course content and colleagues etc.) .

 Building upon the assumption that collaborative learning helps to reduce student’s anxiety in advanced EAP courses through the usage of technology- and web-based group projects, this course design presents a theoretical framework and refers to conceptual literature.

 It is designed with reference to Bennet’s computer supported collaborative learning in a project-based prostgraduate graduation program and the research findings of Greek Open University on overcoming anxiety in foreign language learning. This EAP course mainly focuses on the role of the teacher as facilitator and mediator to create a low-anxiety classroom environment in order to empower students’ Academic writing skills. Self-reflective learning and collaborative (online) learning strategies (collaborative writing, collaborative presentations, peer assignments etc.) are employed to achieve these goals.