The future of language education – learning lessons from the pandemic

https://www.ecml.at/future-of-language-education

The Covid pandemic has presented challenges for all sectors of education and has led to widespread changes in educational practices. These have greatly affected language teaching and learning across Europe.

In February 2021 a month-long survey developed under the auspices of the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) and its Professional Network Forum was launched to find out how institutions and teachers and learners of languages have responded to the challenges presented by successive lockdowns and social distancing. It also explored how language teaching and assessment methodologies have evolved, and what the impact has been on language learning and motivation. There were over 1700 responses from professionals in 40 countries working at different educational levels.

These responses have painted a clear and rich picture of the variety of ways in which teachers and learners have coped with the situation. They also provided insights into some of the positive changes in language teaching that the pandemic has generated, as well as challenges that teachers and learners have confronted.

This webinar, which continues the series of ECML webinars on Covid 19 and language education, will focus on preliminary findings from this Europe-wide survey, including key statistical data and a review of the major themes, challenges and lessons learnt. It will also outline next steps.