The IC – ENGLISH – Innovative Platform for Adult Language Education project focuses on addressing the needs of English teachers working with adults with reduced competencies and skills. The project results aim to assist these teachers by providing them with suitable knowledge, resources, and tools; however, these resources are meant to truly support teachers at the meta level of adult education. All resources – developed outcomes – will be available on the multimedia platform IC-ENGLISH.

Partners identified common problems in the field of adult education, such as:

• Overloaded textbooks with few exercises that activate new material, resulting, among other reasons, from the fact that textbooks are written in series; however, adults rarely learn the language through continuous education year after year; they usually learn intermittently, and many end up learning at the B1 level.
• Lack of teachers' knowledge about andragogy, learning styles, motivation, needs diagnosis, recognition of learning beliefs, ability to translate this into classes for adults;
• In teaching people with low capacities/skills – grammatical sections in textbooks are a problem: linguistic jargon, explaining grammatical issues often requires inference/analysis ability;
• Low frequency of classes, on and off learning – language learning requires regularity, and adults often work and have difficulty balancing work, family, and learning;
• Developing natural communication in discourse is a challenge – adults often use a studied version of English.

To address the above-mentioned problems, partners decided to assemble a transnational and interdisciplinary team of experts composed of methodologists, training techniques specialists, andragogy experts, psychologists, experienced English teachers, as well as media and computer science specialists.

The project assumes the use of modern technologies. As part of the project, a pilot cycle will be conducted: the International School of Language Teachers. An international group of English teachers (8 from each country, 24 people in total) will test the developed products, assimilate their practical application, and use them in their daily work with adult learners.

Research Team

• Ana Cunha 
• Lucimar Dantas

Partners

The project brings together 3 entities from 3 countries of the European Union as follows:

• Euro-Forum Spółka Jawna
• GLAFKA S.R.O.
• Lusófona University
• Social Media
• Facebook