In most of the cases, students believe that studying English is about just learning another language they must do at school and which merely is based on different grammar structures which later they put into practice in worksheets and textbooks. Even though the school where I am carrying out my internship does not employ textbooks nor evaluates students through tests or exams, the English teacher of the school normally works by worksheets and though a grammar-focused approach. Therefore, I am sure that the students were not aware of the communicative purpose that English and languages in general have. That is the key when learning languages, to see the main purposes for using them. 

 

In fact, this was the main goal of our T.U, to achieve a communicative goal of English.

 

Our project consisted on offering students a new experience of learning English, a way that they are not used to do it and hence, to promote a different idea of what it means to learn this foreign language. Having said that, students from 2 different schools participated and collaborated in the project. The objective was that each one of the students from both schools had a colleague assigned, who would later become his/her penfriend.

 

This way, throughout the 7 sessions of the project, students would be having a friendship-like interaction by writing each other letters, sharing their personal objects, sending videos and even making a special souvenir for them.

 

The target groups were students from 4th grade (A class), aged 9-10 years old. The project was usually carried out, in my case, twice a week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 1h each).

 

Pupils of my school, one of the sessions of the project was in the format of big group whereas in the second session, were in the format of split group.

 

Down below I am providing the PDF file with the T.U Design and the link to the different materials and resources we created for the project.