In the global world, where communication is beyond physical spaces, language competences, particularly foreign language competences, are highly important in almost all areas of life. In various official documents is indicated that English is becoming de facto a lingua franca, and it is the most taught foreign language, both in Europe and globally. However, according to the EACEA/Eurydice’s latest Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe, the outcome of foreign language learning in Europe is poor and students are not able to use very simple language, even with support. At the same time, almost half of Europeans report that they are unable to hold a conversation in any language other than their mother tongue. Of all four language skills, which are reading, writing, listening and speaking, speaking seems to be the most difficult to develop.
On the other hand, there are megatrends, external factors, transforming the world around us. Among these trends are an aging population, shifts on the labour markets, skills mismatch and economic shifts all around the world. These megatrends have implications on education as well and necessitate development of the skills of existing employees. Therefore, relevant, affordable and flexible programs become popular for these groups of people. Distance education has, thus, emerged as an extremely important option and has been identified as “the most important trend in education” by the Horizon Report in 2013. (Horizon Shortlist Report, 2013). As for Shah (2017), around 20 million new learners signed up for their first MOOC in 2017, taking the total number of learners to 78 million.
Foreign language skills are in high demand, and the need for related online courses is widespread. Within this perspective, language MOOCs can be a decent alternative for adult learners. With these data at hand, Speak English-MOOC will offer adult learners from diverse geographical areas the opportunity to have an advantage in succeeding on the ever-increasingly competitive job markets. Speak English-MOOC – English Language MOOC to Improve Speaking Skills Project is a Strategic Partnership Project in the field of Adult Education funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. The main objective of the project is to develop and offer a 6-week online content focused on improving speaking skills in English language.
The Intellectual Outputs to be provided in the project are:
INTELLECTUAL OUTPUT 1: Speak English-MOOC
INTELLECTUAL OUTPUT 2: Speak English- OER HUB
The project is coordinated by Bartın University and the partnership involves Universidad Politechnica de Madrid (UPM) from Spain; BEST Institut für berufsbezogene Weiterbildung und Personaltraining GmbH from Austria; Eskişehir Anadolu University from Turkey.
The kick-off meeting for the project was held on December 17, 2019 in Austria with participation of all project partners where details on the design of the MOOC contents and the platform where the content will be hosted were discussed, as well as the dissemination plan during lifetime and after completion of the project.