Level Up
As part of Local Development Week, with the ILDN, we thought we’d give a little insight to what it was like to work on some of our programmes. In this blog, our Tutor, Stephen O’Connell, talks about what it was like to work with participants in Level Up, our Task-Based English language programme. Stephen has a PhD in second language acquisition and over twenty years of experience in additional language learning and assessment.
“People living within the international protection system in Ireland have many needs. Language support is certainly high among them, but so is general integration support – into Irish educational, employment, and social life. We’ve found that the needs around language and needs around understanding Irish work, education, and social life are inextricably intertwined. Knowing this, we used the principles of Task-Based Language Teaching (Long 2015; Van den Branden, 2022) to inform the approach taken to create this programme.
“As a result, Level Up is a 60-hour course of custom-made materials to help the participants improve their English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills within the contexts of language use that are of greatest need to them. We’ve developed lessons around reading current job advertisements, responding to questions in job interviews, and writing email requests to supervisors about changing a shift. We’ve incorporated Irish culture as well, with dedicated activities around St. Brigid’s Day and the G.A.A. as an example.”
“Now in our third iteration, we are finding that this sustained focus on relevant language use keeps participant engagement high and feelings about the course positive. In our post-course surveys from the first two iterations, we learned that participants greatly appreciated having the opportunity to learn step-by-step how the job search process works in Ireland and having the time and space to practice the necessary language for those various steps. Several also cited increased confidence as a benefit, and 100% of the 25 participants who completed the survey said they would recommend the course to friends and colleagues. We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to continue this program at DNP, which is meeting a variety of our participants’ needs, and ideally, find a way to expand it.”
Stephen O’Connell, Level Up Tutor
The Level Up program started with a Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth grant to DNP to support people living within the international protection system in Ireland.
