Immersion language teaching using EP Languages

The Education Perfect Languages programme offers a large library of highly scaffolded and interactive lessons. 

This article contains some ideas on how you can use the EP Languages platform to support immersion language learning environments. Let's explore! 

Our lessons are aligned to the Common European Framework and ACTFL Proficiency guidelines as well as many international curriculum requirements such as IGCSE and IB.

These skills based lessons enable the practice of all language learning skills in authentic contexts. They are combined with the automatic marking and rich data insights on student progress on EP, as well as the ability to assign personalised learning pathways based on students’ strengths and development areas. 

Skills development at all levels

• Teachers can assign skills practice to help students improve in a particular skill, in class or for homework.
• Assign whole class skill practice or individualised learning pathways to support different strengths in different skill areas. This can be particularly helpful where students come from different learning backgrounds or if students join halfway through a year.
• Try having one lesson a week where students have time to focus on relevant skills for their level (or you might do this for an allocated amount of time at the start of each language lesson). 
• The skills lessons can be used in a flipped classroom set up where students work on their skills independently outside of class time and then class time is used for interactive activities and student/teacher interaction. 
• Scaffolded grammar lessons can be assigned where students might need support with their sentence building.
• The platform also has an assessment functionality that allows you to set both pre and post-tests, and then assign differentiated learning pathways based on the student results.
• Setting a task or assessment provides you with rich data insights on how students are progressing, and enables you to plan the next steps in each individual learner’s pathway. 

For beginner learners

• Scaffolded speaking lessons are available to support students to develop confidence in their speaking skills. Students can record themselves speaking and compare their answer to a model answer. Teachers can also give feedback.

• Beginner writing lessons are designed to support students in building sentences. Sentence patterns and examples are provided, followed by a large series of scaffolded activities. 

• Authentic task lessons are helpful for younger, beginner level students. These get students using their language skills in authentic contexts and often they are required to upload a video or written project to the platform. 

For advanced learners

• Teachers can use written and recorded stimulus material as a starting point for class debate, discussion and personal response.
• The advanced writing lessons specifically focus on text types. They guide students through the key features of certain text types and provide scaffolded support to focus on the building blocks of sentences. Each lesson ends with an extended task where students are expected to write their own version of the text type. 
• EP's Peer Review functionality allows students to review each others’ work and provide feedback. This can be particularly useful when students are focusing on their writing skills. 

These are just a few ideas about how you can use the EP platform to support an immersion setting. For further support, get in touch!