Recently added inventory resources

Would like to share information about two resources I recently added to our inventory.
They are both Padlet pages.
The first offers an overview of paper abstracts and videocordings of online presentations at (the online version of) the 2020 EUROCALL conference.
One of the contributions of specific interest for our community (and teachers of Italian in particular) is ‘Data-driven learning for languages other than English: Charting the territory’ (Forti et al., 2020) about presenting MALT-IT2. This stands for “Measuring automatically the level of texts for second or foreign language learners of Italian”. It is a freely accessible online tool that assigns an inputted text to a specific CEFR level. This can be a great tool for producing customised teaching and learning materials.

The second is a Padlet page on using corpus tools in LSP and CLIL.

In addition to links to several mega corpora this resource about the use of big data in language teaching and learning lists a number of other resources, some accompanied with introductory materials such as tutorials, exploratory tasks and sample activities.
Especially for LSP professionals the column ‘LSP Corpora & DDL’ has recently been added to facilitate knowledge sharing about specialized corpora and related resources in a range of languages.
Its current first entry is ‘Check your Smile’, a digital game-based collaborative language learning website to learn Languages for Specific Purposes and Specific Vocabulary in particular.

Furthermore, in the column ‘More Tools & DDL Resources’ we aim (again collectively) to curate tools, materials and teaching practices that are useful for introducing data driven teaching and learning approaches in the classroom.

As the padlet page is editable (no registration required) we hope that thanks to the contributions of our LinguaCoP members to the ‘LSP Corpora & DDL’ and other columns its usefulness for the LSP community will be enhanced.

First expert meeting of ECML project “CEFR Companion Volume Implementation Toolbox”

Passing on the latest (June 24, 2020)news published by the ECML project “CEFR Companion Volume Implementation Toolbox” – or “the VITbox Project” for short – which has now started its activities. The project aims to provide digital resources that exemplify how to implement the ideas of the new CEFR Companion Volume in language teaching at university and in vocational training. These resources will include short videos, checklists, texts and classroom tasks and for use by teacher educators and teacher trainers in their training sessions and by language teachers for self-study purposes. The material will be produced in English and French but will include examples from other languages. The idea behind the VITbox project is to create an open toolbox from which educators, trainers and teachers can freely choose the resources they consider suitable for their purposes, adapt them to their individual training needs and eventually create their own material.

The team is now looking forward to setting up a substantial database of varied materials, that has been piloted in their own training sessions and freely available to the public.

Johann Fischer, Laurent Rouveyrol, Barbara Sawicka, Julia Zabala Delgado

  • VITbox project website: English – French
  • ECML programme of activities 2020-2023 “Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences”: English – French

New ECML resource website: CEFR-QualiMatrix – A quality assurance matrix for CEFR use

The European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) of the Council of Europe is pleased to announce the completion in both English and French of its CEFR-QualiMatrix resource website “A quality assurance matrix for CEFR use” (www.ecml.at/CEFRqualitymatrix), an output of the ECML programme “Languages at the heart of learning” (2016-2019).

The CEFR-QualiMatrix supports teachers and other language education professionals in engaging in curriculum renewal supported by the CEFR action-oriented approach vision of teaching and learning.

Alongside the matrix tool, the website provides a rich collection of resources and promising practices that can be used by different stakeholders at the levels of policy, curriculum development, teaching and assessment.

Find a flyer about CEFR-QualiMatrix project int the Catapult resource library here:

Flyer about the Quality Assurance Matrix for CEFR use project