Project title: LATILL (Level-Adequate Texts in Language Learning)
Reference: 2021-1-AT01-KA220-SCH-000029604
Project acronym: LATILL
Project duration: 01.05.2022 – 30.04.2025
Key Action: Partnerships for cooperation and exchanges of practices
Action Type: Cooperation partnerships in school education
Funding: European Union. Erasmus + KA2 – Cooperation partnership in school education
EU Grant: 351 091,00 EUR
Coordinator: Universität Wien (Austria)
Universitätsring 1
1010 Wien
AUSTRIA
http://www.univie.ac.at
+431427718218
Partners:
Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine)
Bohdana Labinska, Tetiana Koropatnitska, Serhii Lukaniuk, Oksana Dedova
http://chnu.edu.ua/
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen (Germany)
Detmar Meurers, Benedikt Beuttler
https://uni-tuebingen.de
Universidad De Salamanca (Spain)
Alicia García Holgado, Lucía García Holgado, María Mar Soliño Pazó, Roberto Therón
http://usal.es
Verein Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch (Verein ÖSD) (Austria)
Manuela Glaboniat, Carmen Peresich, Melanie Weiß
https://www.osd.at/
Advisory Board:
- Michael Becker-Mrotzek (Universität Köln, Deutschland)
- Mi-Young Lee (Seoul National University, Republik Korea)
- André Moeller (Deutsche Welle, Deutschland)
- Sandra Reitbrecht (PH Wien, Österreich)
- Michaela Rückl (Universität Salzburg, Österreich)
- Dörthe Uphoff (USP Sao Paulo, Brasilien)
- Katrin Wisniewski (Universität Bamberg, Deutschland)
Background
Reading competences in foreign languages are essential for young Europeans to gain access to information in other countries, to compare different perspectives on complex issues and to cooperate in solving problems in international contexts. The teaching of these crucial competences cannot rely on pre-packaged materials in textbooks and readers, but needs to use reading materials that (1) address current issues to build and maintain reading motivation and that (2) meet the language levels of students to develop their reading competences. In order to increase fluency in reading, it is of particular importance that the texts' linguistic features correspond to the individual learner's level of second language acquisition. Most learning environments require individualisation, and in the field of reading in a foreign language, this means that teachers need to be able to provide texts of different difficulty level to a group of students in order to effectively foster indidivual development. Therefore, the LATILL project supports foreign language teachers by developing digital tools that enable them to identify such level-adequate texts of interest for their various classes and individual learners. More specifically, the LATILL team is to create a freely accessible platform for European – and worldwide – teachers of German as a foreign and second language that provides a search and analysis function for German texts on a specific topic and CEFR level and offers supporting tools and materials for working with authentic texts. Technical advances in the field of computer linguistics allow to develop a digital tool that enables foreign language teachers to identify texts that are level-adequate in terms of morphology, syntax, lexicon, and genre. The use of such level-adequate texts in combination with a self-regulatory approach to foreign language reading and implicit lexico-grammatical learning allows for substantial quality improvement of foreign language programmes.
Objectives
The LATILL project addresses this need for the field of German as a foreign and second language by providing open educational resources including a search engine to identify level-adequate texts on a particular topic in the internet. To initiate change at the classroom level and to overcome theory-practice problems of top-down approaches to the professional development of teachers, the LATILL platform will be developed in a joint effort of foreign language researchers and teachers; this collaboration involves professional development modules for foreign language teachers that are grounded in experience-based and reflexive principles. An accompanying evaluation study will look into the teachers' use of and perspectives on the developed tools and materials in Spanish and Ukrainian classrooms at the secondary level and will allow for conclusions on desirable improvements of the tools, materials and accompanying measures. These professional development modules will be freely accessible for use in GFL teacher educational and professional development.
Activities
In the first phase, the LATILL team develops the above-mentioned tools based on a theoretical modelling of lexical and grammatical difficulty of texts in foreign language reading related to "Profile deutsch". In a second phase, these tools will be piloted with groups of German-as-a-foreign-language teachers from Spain and Ukraine at the secondary level. For preparation, teachers will be offered a three-day online workshop in Vienna to discuss methods of teaching reading in a foreign language and to explore potentials of the LATILL tools for their specific contexts. A continuous webinar will support their community of practice during the piloting phase. In the third phase, the LATILL team will improve the educational platform with its tools, information and materials according to the feedback of teachers from the piloting phase.
Impact
The LATILL platform is to provide teachers of German as a foreign and second language with powerful tools for identifying level-adequate texts, helpful information on teaching reading and motivating materials for the classroom. LATILL conferences in four partner countries are to engage wider communities of teachers and teacher trainers in the use of these educational resources as well as the professional development modules. Finally, publications in academic journals on the theoretical background of the LATILL project are to inspire the academic discussion on reading in a foreign language and disseminate the project results as well as to motivate and support colleagues in foreign languages other than English and German to develop similar tools.