INTERNATIONAL PROJECT

MEMBERS FROM CIAC PARTICIPATE IN A MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN PROJECT TECON 3

On March 28-29, CIAC researchers Manuel Célio Conceição, Neuza Costa, Pedro Sousa and Fátima Noronha participated in a meeting of the European project TECON 3 (Teaching English as Content in Tertiary Education), coordinated by partners from Pitesti University, Romania. This project aims to analyse the situation of English language teaching in higher education and to propose an innovative reference framework that supports the teaching of this language, not as a means or instrument, but as content.

During the meeting, CIAC members presented their contribution to the TECON 3 Framework, namely regarding intercultural communication competence (based mainly on M. Byram’s works), post-method pedagogy (based mainly on B. Kumaravadivelu’s works) and also the activity example of the implementation of this framework. In addition, two complete teaching units were presented, which, in an innovative way, focus on the work in the English class on topics in the field of biomedical sciences and bioengineering; and a proposal for a questionnaire to be applied during the implementation phase of the project and which will be preceded by training for the participants.

The CIAC team was responsible for preparing the report on the situation of English teaching in higher education in the countries participating in this project (Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany and Portugal) and for collecting information (through an online questionnaire) from higher education teachers in these countries.

TECON 3 aims to develop an innovative methodology for teaching English in higher education, based on a sequence of modules adjusted to the language complexity and grammaticality of different academic areas.