For the last two decades much has changed in the context of education. Technology advancements in an all connected globalised world enacted new approaches in language teaching, particularly in the context of higher education. This chapter will therefore address state-of-the-art digital language education, supported by relevant literature in the field (e.g.); Arnó-Macià (2012); Atherton (2018); Blannin (2022); Li (2017); Peterson, Yamazaki et al. (2021); Vuorikari et al. (2022) among other related studies, programmes and projects – in order to provide a complete overview of the current situation as far as quality in digital language learning and teaching in Higher Education in Europe is concerned. The chapter also encapsulates and covers a variety of digital tools and resources which have contributed towards the quality of teaching and learning in the depicted context of languages for specific purposes.
It is of common sense to acknowledge the important role that languages play in all areas of life, from business and finance to education or cultural frameworks. It is of common sense that learning languages opens many doors, facilitating a myriad of educational and work prospects. In fact, speaking two or more languages proficiently or even in a rather holistic way is a vehicle for an endless world of possibilities not only in education but also in the most diverse political, social and cultural settings.
Nonetheless, language learning has not always been a door open to the world and it was only accessible to merchants, travellers, businessmen, intellectuals or to the ones who could afford an education, either at home or at educational institutions. The concept of formal education was non-existent until the eighteenth century when the Enlightenment movement raised important questions about education and the need to improve peoples’ mind through its power and via the creation of schools and universities (Feldges, 2022). However, the concept of popular education would only come to the fore of the political debate in the late nineteenth century. More schools were then built, schools for teachers also became forcefully needed as education was made available to an ever-growing proportion of the population. Teaching was thenceforth based on rote-learning and on rational and empirical approaches to life which reflected on the way learning was instilled into the students’ minds. Reading, writing, arithmetic, plus religious instruction, were part of the school curriculum, and teachers were merely instructors (Morgan, 2011). At university, classical languages such as Greek or Latin had a strong tradition, whereas modern foreign languages would only be adopted as a university discipline in the early twentieth century. However, only in the last three or four decades of the twentieth century would modern languages digress from their almost exclusive literary input and grammar focus and sociolinguistics started to realise the importance of the spoken and social aspects of language (Coleman, 2004), coinciding with the emergence of the communicative language learning approach in the 1970s. In secondary schools, modern foreign languages would only be widely integrated in the curriculum in the 1970s, because of a national curricular change in England, also in line with European developments in that field (Dobson, 2018).
The QuILL project (2020-1-PT01-KA226-HE-094809) is co-financed by the Erasmus + programme of the European Union. The content of this publication is only responsibility of its authorship and neither the European Commission nor the Portuguese National Agency are responsible for the use that may be made of the information disseminated in this publication.
This publication, containing important theoretical and practical guidelines, is aimed at Higher Education policy makers, as well as Languages for Specific Purpose (LSP) lecturers, to improve the implementation of digital based language learning opportunities in higher education systems. It also intends to present, examine and reflect on the opportunities related to the use of digital technology in the language learning and teaching process.
This publication brings together contributions from the six partners that integrate the QuILL project consortium. Therefore, it consists of six chapters:
Chapter one - Quality in Digital Language Education State of the Art
Chapter two - Quality Criteria and Quality Indicators in OER-Integrated Language Learning
Chapter three - Innovation in Language Teaching
Chapter four - Higher education Student’s Motivation to Learn Languages using Digital Technologies and Resources
Chapter five - Implementing Digital Technologies in Language Teaching at a Systemic Level in the HE Sector
Chapter six - Digital Education and LSP Contents in Language Learning and Teaching
