Innovation in Language Learning

Teaching second languages across most European educational systems does not always entail teaching the culture that they convey due to several reasons, among which the followings can be identified: i. The materialization of the relationship between language and culture in specific educational contexts; ii. The pedagogical constructs to enhance intercultural communicative competence; and iii. The many goals that intercultural education must accomplish through bilingual education (Gómez-Parra, 2020, pp. 44–45) [1]. Moreover, the European labour market shows a growing demand for multi- and plurilingual communication skills and pluricultural awareness (Adiyaman et al., 2020) [2]. TEACUP (Teachers, Culture, Pluri) is a KA203 European project funded by the Spanish National Agency (SEPIE) (ref. no. 2019-1-ES01-KA203-064412) whose main goal is to design and deliver teaching modules that highlight synergies in the teaching of various languages and cultures, thereby integrating the notions of plurilingualism (PL) and pluriculturalism (PC) into international training programs for foreign language (FL) teachers. TEACUP consortium consists of seven institutions from five European and non-European countries (Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary and the USA). TEACUP steers away from the notion that an individual’s languages and cultures are kept in strictly separated mental compartments. The primary target group of TEACUP are FL teacher educators, who can use these modules in the teaching of FL pre- and in-service teachers, who stand as the secondary target group of this European project. TEACUP has already designed and piloted the first set of modules during the academic year 2020-2021. This research will analyze the data from the implementation of one of the language modules with two groups of participants: i. A group of 4th year language teacher students of the University of Córdoba (n = 42) as face-to-face during the months of October and November 2020; and ii. A group of in-service teachers (n = 19) of Córdoba, among which the same module was implemented during the month of February 2021. A validated questionnaire through the Delphi method has been used as the instrument for the analysis of data, which are both quantitative and qualitative. A mixed methods research will be conducted to scrutinize such data, whose results indicate that teachers (both in- and pre-service) highly value as positive both the contents and the competences obtained through this module, and they mostly find it innovative and revealing. Discussion will be focused on the fact that teacher educators together with pre- and in-service teachers need to be equipped with this kind of innovative tools in order to promote a more integrative approach to foreign language learning, which can support the provision of a wide range of languages and cultures and help students value and make use of joint linguistic and cultural competences of citizens.

Keywords: Second Language Teaching, International European Project KA203, Culture, Joint Approach.