"The project ""Fit 4 Digital Linguistic Education” aims at 1) creating a European knowledge base of digital competences for language educators and 2) providing the European adult educational landscape with a newly developed online assessment tool.CONTEXTLanguage is seen as the gateway to the world, as an instrument for better mutual understanding, exchange and as a basis for communicating and living common values and views. However, knowledge of the language of the respective country of residence is also the basis for survival in the job market.Europe is confronted with immense challenges - many languages are available in a geographically very small area, which makes mutual exchange, the growing together of the individual countries and the transfer of knowledge and labor mobility more difficult. In addition to these challenges, Europe was and is confronted with a large number of asylum seekers who - as soon as the status of asylum or subsidiary protection is final - must be integrated into the labor market as quickly as possible in order to become full and valuable members of the host country. Efforts in this direction are essential, on the one hand, in order not to overstretch the national budgets of the member states financially and, on the other hand, to strengthen the perception of the migrant population as valuable members of society and to maintain social peace. However, language learning is time and cost intensive and requires an incredible amount of resources. New ways of teaching language skills are therefore needed at this point. The digitalization of recent years has created opportunities to teach even complex content in online tools and courses. In order to be able to use these efficiently in language teaching, teachers in this field also need the corresponding skills. This is precisely the subject of the ""Fit4DigiLinE"" project. PROJECT OBJECTIVES1. increase competences on digital language education2. encourage the use of digital learning and assessment tools by language teachers3. develop a European wide knowledge base of digital competences connected to personal and social competences4. ensuring the employability and further development of language educators in a digitalized world5. support the monitoring of competences for individuals as well as for education providersPARTICIPANTSIn total 36 language teachers from 5 project countries (AT, IT, ES, FI + GR) will participate in 2 LTT events.PARTNERORGANISATIONSThe partnership consisted 6 European organizations: 2 adult education centers (AT+FI), 1 language school (ES), 1 innovative educational technology & research company (GR), 1 private training agency + consultancy body (IT) and 1 state-approved assessment center + developer of languages tests (AT).ACTIVITIES + METHODOLOGYWe pursue an action-oriented methodology to produce all deliverables and to realize our project objectives. In this vein, we divided all project activities into individual TASKS, each of which leading to an actual output or interim result, such as a document or product. This action-based methodology with clearly define TASKS makes actions and their results measurable.PROJECT RESULTS1) A REPORT on Motivation and limitations for digital transfer of languages including the results of a survey about demands and needs of educators and participants, best practice examples about digital tools and their usage as well as learning materials2) E-LEARNING COURSE: trainer modules incl. videos and self-reflection tasks on personal, social and digital competences for teaching languages in a digital setting3) ASSESSMENT TOOL for digital, social and personal competences4) TRAIN-THE-TRAINER GUIDE to use the assessment center5) MOOC: digital competences for languages educatorsIMPACT AND LONG-TERM BENEFITThe impact of Fit 4 DigiLinE will have the following impact on all geographical levels: ~ better informed language educators on the possibilities of digital teaching in their specific field~ empowerment of language educators on assessing the learner’s development~ awareness about the connection of digital competences with personal and social competences and their importance in online language teaching ~ transnational informed language educators and other stakeholders through the MOOC course time and place independentThe OPEN SOURCE ACCESS to all project outputs will be guaranteed for at least 5 years after project end. Our aimed impact is to initiate a broad debate on the importance of digital competences within language education and to equip as many educators as possible with the tools.Continuous development of results is also planned within the consortium based on their business models.A TRANSFERABILITY of the results is given – the E-Learning-course is created in a way, that the content can be incorporated in various LMS´s. All information gathered and developed can be transferred to primary, secondary and high schools as well as to Universities."

"<< Background >>Reading competences in foreign languages are essential for young Europeans to gain access to information in other countries, to compare different perspectives on complex issues and to cooperate in solving problems in international contexts. The teaching of these crucial competences cannot rely on pre-packaged materials in textbooks and readers, but needs to use reading materials that (1) address current issues to build and maintain reading motivation and that (2) meet the language levels of students to develop their reading competences. In order to increase fluency in reading, it is of particular importance that the texts' linguistic features correspond to the individual learner's level of second language acquisition. Most learning environments require individualisation, and in the field of reading in a foreign language, this means that teachers need to be able to provide texts of different difficulty level to a group of students in order to effectively foster indidivual development. Therefore, the LATILL project supports foreign language teachers by developing digital tools that enable them to identify such level-adequate texts of interest for their various classes and individual learners. More specifically, the LATILL team is to create a freely accessible platform for European – and worldwide – teachers of German as a foreign and second language that provides a search and analysis function for German texts on a specific topic and CEFR level and offers supporting tools and materials for working with authentic texts. Technical advances in the field of computer linguistics allow to develop a digital tool that enables foreign language teachers to identify texts that are level-adequate in terms of morphology, syntax, lexicon, and genre. The use of such level-adequate texts in combination with a self-regulatory approach to foreign language reading and implicit lexico-grammatical learning allows for substantial quality improvement of foreign language programs.<< Objectives >>The LATILL project addresses this need for the field of German as a foreign and second language by providing open educational resources including a search engine to identify level-adequate texts on a particular topic in the internet. To initiate change at the classroom level and to overcome theory-practice problems of top-down approaches to the professional development of teachers, the LATILL platform will be developed in a joint effort of foreign language researchers and teachers; this collaboration involves professional development modules for foreign language teachers that are grounded in experience-based and reflexive principles. An accompanying evaluation study will look into the teachers' use of and perspectives on the developed tools and materials in Spanish and Ukrainian classrooms at the secondary level and will allow for conclusions on desirable improvements of the tools, materials and accompanying measures. These professional development modules will be freely accessible for use in GFL teacher educationa and professional development.<< Implementation >>In a first phase, the LATILL team develops the above-mentioned tools based on a theoretical modelling of lexical and grammatical difficulty of texts in foreign language reading related to ""Profile deutsch"". In a second phase, these tools will be piloted with groups of German-as-a-foreign-language teachers from Spain and Ukraine at the secondary level. For preparation, teachers will be offered a three-day online workshop in Vienna to discuss methods of teaching reading in a foreign language and to explore potentials of the LATILL tools for their specific contexts. A continuous webinar will support their community of practice during the piloting phase. In a third phase, the LATILL team will improve the educational platform with its tools, information and materials according to the feedback of teachers from the piloting phase.<< Results >>The LATILL platform is to provide teachers of German as a foreign and second language with powerful tools for identifying level-adequate texts, helpful information on teaching reading and motivating materials for the classroom. LATILL conferences in four partner countries are to engage wider communities of teachers and teacher trainers in the use of these educational resources as well as the professional development modules. Finally, publications in academic journals on the theoretical background of the LATILL project are to inspire the academic discussion on reading in a foreign language and dissiminate the project results as well as to motivate and support colleagues in foreign languages other than English and German to develop similar tools."