TRAILs - LSP Teacher Training Summer School
TRAILs addresses the issue of teacher education and skills development to promote high quality and innovative teaching in the field of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). The starting point of the project is the fact that most higher education teachers involved in the LSP field have received little or no specific training, which is a matter of particular concern for teachers and learners of LSP in VET institutions where language skills are expected to enhance mobility and employability.
The 8 partners involved will explore the situation and needs of teaching LSP to define objectives and implement LSP teacher training programmes made to measure for the specific target. They will contribute to the design of new LSP teacher training programmes that will be offered at European higher education institutions, on a transnational collaborative basis because the problems identified cannot be dealt with on a regional basis only.
TRAILs will contribute to innovative solutions and tools to support skills development for LSP staff and for future LSP teachers in higher education, both at national level for each of the partners and at the European level. To address the challenge set in the highly specific context of LSP, a transnational and collaborative approach will be tested and evaluated. Based on needs analysis, input from research and good practice, the project will rely on ICT innovative potential for communication and preparation and on a customized methodology. LSP teacher training will be linked to the needs of future and current LSP teachers in terms of teaching methodology with particular reference to the use of ICT in classroom and blended learning and teaching.
The targeted public are higher education LSP teachers and future language teachers. The training outcomes and curriculum of an LSP teacher training programme will be defined and the LSP teacher training programme will be tested through the TRAILs Summer School for the development of relevant and high-quality skills and competences of future and existing ESP language teachers.
The most important results to disseminate will be the intellectual outputs (identification and analysis of LSP teacher training programmes in Europe, identification of LSP teacher needs, training outcomes of the TRAILs Summer School, LSP teacher training curriculum, and evaluation method and tool) as these provide the fundamental steps that will lead to a successful implementation of the TRAILs Summer School.
TRAILs will also contribute to promote LSP in language teaching. Specific dissemination tools will be developed through the project to be distributed at multiplier events (a brochure project website, Facebook page). All project partners have broad networks of professional contacts, also through sectorial associations. Direct beneficiaries for each partner is estimated around 30. We reckon the indirect beneficiaries will approximatively be 1000.
Contact: Marie-Christine Deyrich