Innovation in Language Learning

The Leto plus module is a special module offered by the University of Ljubljana to its international students. About 350 students each academic year learn Slovenian within it. Most of them are from the Western Balkans, however students are coming from about 25 different countries. The aim of the module is to support students in learning and progressing in the Slovenian language they need for their studies, and to help them integrate more quickly into Slovenian society, as well as adjust to life in Slovenia, either during their studies or in the longer term, as many of them are planning to continue to live in Slovenia and build their professional careers there. Slovenian is taught once a week for three lessons in a classroom in groups of up to 20 students. The lessons in the classroom are supplemented by a range of additional activities that allow for a more lively, authentic and active contact with Slovenian language, with people living in Slovenian society. All these is possible due to the fact that learning Slovenian takes place in a Slovenian-speaking environment. Learning Slovenian in the classroom is complemented by visits to various Slovenian towns, theatres, cinemas, museums, galleries, concerts and fairs, Parliament and the House of the EU. The content areas covered include Slovenian literature, translating, music, architecture and cuisine among others. These activities can be classified as activities beyond the classroom (Benson and Reinders, 2014; Nunan, 2014; Nunan and Richards, 2014; Jackson 2015; Richards, 2015a, 2015b; Reinders, 2020), but they are also a form of experiential learning (Kohonen, 1992; Kohonen et al. 2014), leading to autonomous learning (Lin and Reinders, 2018; Raya & Viera, 2020) In this paper, we present how these activities are perceived by and respond to by our students.