ELAPSE aimed to develop primary and secondary language teachers' awareness of CLIL/soft CLIL methodology transnationally and to build teachers' confidence and expertise to adopt a cross-curricular approach to the planning and delivery of language lessons.The ELAPSE project partners had collectively identified that knowledge of CLIL/soft CLIL in the primary sector of their respective countries was limited and had not been embedded within curriculum planning and delivery. Project partners were aware of small-scale pockets of interest in CLIL/soft CLIL methodology in their respective countries. Furthermore there was a lack of tried and tested materials available to primary languages teachers across Europe to enable them to use a CLIL/soft CLIL approach. By creating 21 sets of resources catering for teachers of English, French, German and Spanish as additional languages, ELAPSE was able to plug an immediate gap in available resources. The resources for teachers focus on Literacy, Numeracy, STEM subjects and Health and Wellbeing. The focus of ELAPSE is on the upper primary phase and on bridging resources which can be used as pupils transition between the primary and the secondary sector. The resulting practical resources and good practice guide are now available across the European Union on a dedicated open-access project website as well as an online course. These will act as a self-access bank of CLIL/soft CLIL resources, including an outline of CLIL/soft CLIL methodology, teacher support materials, advisory videos from experienced CLIL teachers, evaluation materials and a good practice guide. Teachers and teacher training and support organisations are at the core of the ELAPSE project and we were committed to ensuring that ELAPSE’s resources and the online course were piloted by practising teachers. This has ensured that our resources are fit for purpose and that classroom teachers around Europe and globally can be confident about using our self-access resources, which include step-by-step learning opportunities to build awareness of CLIL and to build confidence to embark on using CLIL/soft CLIL methodology in their own country/sector. ELAPSE project partners anticipate that there will be around 80,000 teachers involved in various ways in the project. This includes teacher-contributors who acted as critical friends throughout the project to critique the work of the project partners such as the agreed direction of the online course and the suggested content of the 21 sets of CLIL/soft CLIL resources. The more experienced practitioners feature in videos expressing their views on CLIL and soft CLIL methodology and offering their personal tips on what the methodology has brought to them as practitioners and to their school and pupils. Teachers who were new to CLIL/soft CLIL piloted our resources and online course and assisted the partners in the development of a best practice guide to support other teachers. There will now be teacher-participants new to the approach piloting resources in each of the partner countries. We aim to disseminate our projet further both across participating partner countries (at local, regional and national level) and across Europe. This will involve conducting ‘awareness raising activities’ both in relation to the theme (soft CLIL/CLIL) and specific to the project (outputs etc). Relevant completed outputs to be disseminated include: an online course, a bank of resources, evaluation tools and finally a good practice guide. We believe that this final output will be especially important as it has the potential to have a significant impact on pedagogy and the way languages are taught across Europe. Therefore, we firstly aim to target teachers and teaching communities (both physically and virtually/via social media etc.): teacher trainers, institutions, school/educational networks and stakeholders across the partner countries (UK, ES, FR, AUS) and associate partners across Europe. Following this first phase of dissemination and a period of evaluation (of resources, tools etc), a second phase of dissemination will take place where we will target national agencies and organisations responsible for language teaching and development in both partner countries and associate partners across Europe including; training providers, educational leaders and advisors, networks, subject associations etc. We envisage as a result of the ELAPSE project that there will be a core body of schools in each partner country practising CLIL/soft CLIL at primary/early secondary level; that teachers will have the capacity to upskill themselves in CLIL methodology through the online course, best practice guide & use of our lesson plans and resources, thus creating a lasting and transformative ongoing legacy in European schools. All support materials and resources are entirely free for teachers to use and will be housed for a minimum of three years on our dedicated ELAPSE project website.

The Language MagicianLanguage learning in schools in the EU has been showing ever more dramatic differences between member states. This has been particularly true for the United Kingdom where in 2014 languages were made a statutory requirement in primary schools in England without stipulating the targets for assessing the young language learners' progress. Whilst language teaching in primary schools is the foundation for a successful language strategy at all levels of education, research has shown a strong decline in motivation for pupils once they enter secondary education. Two of the main factors for this are the lack of assessment of learning progress in the UK and traditional, de-motivating testing methods in other member states. Mindful of the need for urgent action regarding this issue, educational organisations with a stake in the improvement of language learning provision decided to enter a strategic partnership under the Erasmus + programme. Their main aim was to combine primary language learning with a method of assessment which motivates young learners to continue learning languages. The participating organisations agreed to improve language teaching and the assessment of linguistic competencies in primary schools by producing an assessment tool in the format of a computer game. For the development of this game the partners used a common core of curricula from Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK as its foundation and – with the respective language versions - created converging standards on a European level. The ten partner organisations were chosen for their expertise in promoting languages, research, teaching primary languages, assessment, translation, e-learning and language games. The Goethe-Institut London, a supporter of language teachers in the UK and all EU member states, was project lead. Together with its British and other European partners, it identified and developed the project idea. Both the Spanish Embassy in the UK and the British language teachers network ALL were extremely helpful and influential in discussing the need to address the imbalance of language learning in the UK and other member states. The Universities of Reading and Leipzig were identified as leading primary language research experts while the University of Perugia was chosen as assessment expert. In order to ensure the necessary practical focus, the Education Ministry of Tenerife supported the development of the tool for Spanish and together with the Education Ministry in Rioja conducted the piloting in its regions. The University of Siena with its e-learning centre joined the partnership and provided the basis for the development of the language game for Italian. The University of Westminster added its translation and localisation expertise for French in the UK. As the project progressed, this tool was tested in 40 schools with overall 6000 pupils in four countries and the outcomes were evaluated using standard quality criteria. In order to support the anchorage of the assessment tool in state schools. a specific training manual for teachers was developed at the Education Ministry in Rioja. Teachers can now use this methodology to be implemented in their schools. Project partners using this manual will draw on this experience for their own teacher training courses.The design of the game was based on intensive research to provide insight into assessing progress in language learning. To enable teachers to analyse the students’ attainment swiftly and with high validity, the so-called “Teacher Dashboard” was used to develop the new tool. This was part of the programming of an existing computer game developed by the Goethe-Institut’s head office in Munich in cooperation with the software company OVOS. The game was then piloted to calibrate the e-learning content to ensure validity of content and construct. The feedback of pupils, teachers, parents and external educators was recorded, analysed and integrated in the implementation of the game. Thus it was possible to test the game in various classroom situations and the obtained data clearly showed the pupils’ progress. The results were compared with traditional pen and paper tests and showed highly significant validity. The researchers’ papers clearly state that THE LANGUAGE MAGICIAN is a fully fledged assessment tool for young language learners.The project has shown benefits for all participants. The feedback from the multiplier events shows what an innovative tool THE LANGUAGE MAGICIAN has proved to be. Students clearly found language learning more enjoyable. This means their learning outcomes will be better and their acquisition of transversal skills will be enhanced. Teachers can now develop their professional skills further using this innovative method and digital advantages. The participating universities have benefited from research and disseminated them to a European and worldwide educational audience.

Digitalisation and globalization ever more determine people’s daily lives, offering a large variety of new visions and lifestyles and turning the world into “a global village”. Thus, there are increasing requirements in language learning as options of working and living abroad – especially within the EU. Even though English as the lingua franca is the most important foreign language, learning one or more of the other 23 languages spoken within the EU is advisable with regard to extended traveling/tourism throughout Europe as well as to the requirements in the world of work.Language learning, however, is largely restricted to schools, meaning that most students tend to become demotivated for the simple fact that it is mandatory. On the other hand, especially the younger generations, the so-called digital natives, have grown up with digital devices and games that usually require at least a minimum knowledge especially of English, usually hardly connected with learning effects produced at schools.Motivation can easily be hightened when relying on the “fun factor”, thus adding the incentive of voluntarily and by one’s own choice taking up the vocabulary and grammar of a foreign language needed to also get along in real life (intrinsic motivation).Combining the “fun factor” and the younger generations’ love of playing digital games with language learning, the project therefore aims at developing, testing and implementing an application for learning English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, on levels A1 and A2, as the underlying concept of an adventure game to be played on mobile digital devices.The app addresses young people aged between 12-17+, i.e. students at secondary level, using it both within the educational context and during spare time, as well as language learners of all ages who wish to learn any of the six most relevant European languages more playfully instead of or alongside ordinary learning at schools or courses.The project aims at developing an adventure game the contents of which include elements of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), creating a game setting at the turn of ages between the Middle Ages and modern times, based on well-known tales and our common European history. Players will create their own individual avatars on a gender neutral basis also taking into account individual preferences as to profession, life etc. (e.g. a trade person, a knight, life in the countryside or a town). Players will have to interact online with other characters in the game and master challenges that they are presented with via books (AR elements) in which they find further information, thus stimulating reading and immersing oneself deeper into past and present aspects of our common European history, cultures, societies and economies.Even though the adventure app will mainly aim at motivating self-learning approaches and flexible, individualized progress, it is also considered to be used at schools, offering an innovative pedagogical tool in language teaching, introducing/furthering low-level implementation of digital devices.On a technical scale, the app will present incentives for immersing with various aspects of digital programming, enhancing interest in STE(A)M, maker education, DIY programming etc. Teaching personnel will be offered a manual and teaching material for full integration of the app and its contents both in language as well as cross-subject teaching (e.g. history, geography).Each player may choose their own pace of learning, which allows for a far better inclusion of students with learning abilities below average. Highly motivated students and those with higher learning abilities will be provided with additional challenges and tasks within the game.The app will also widen learning space and time as it provides the possibility of learning “on the go”, wherever and whenever the learner decides, thus allowing a more playful learning with much greater motivation. It will also enable them to learn several foreign languages if wanted, together with a local, regional, national and international community of players.The aspects of playing the game on an international European level and of its being based on the common European history along with the notion that language learning throughout Europe needs to be given joint, focussed interest has brought the partners of this project together: The Goethe-Institut as the coordinating institution has already cooperated with the UK partners in this project in a project on language learning in primary schools (2015-2018), yet with very different priorities and aims. The coordinator from the Goethe-Institut in London has already taken part in an eTwinning project with one of the partners in Italy. All the other new partners from Italy, France, Germany and Portugal have been included both for their expertise and in order to widen the existing partnerships.