Creating tasks in a less-commonly taught language for the SpeakApps open educational resource: why the CEFR is important for Irish

1. Creating Tasks in a Less-Commonly Taught
Language for an Open Educational
Resource:
Why the CEFR is important for Irish
Colm Ó Ciardubháin (Dublin City University)
Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl (Dublin City University)

2. Outline of Paper
• Summary of socio-linguistic context in Ireland.
• Open Educational Resources (OER):
– Benefits to lesser taught languages
• The Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages (CEFR)
– Benefits to lesser taught languages
• OER, CEFR in Irish language education
• Our experience as part of the SpeakApps project

3. Irish in Ireland
• Irish is one of the two official languages of Ireland according to the
constitution.
• 41.4% of the population (c. 4.5m) can speak Irish to some degree.
(Census, 2011)
• Only a handful of monolingual speakers of Irish remain, if any.

4. Irish in Ireland: The Education System
• English medium schools
– Irish taught in Primary Schools
– Compulsory subject in Secondary Schools
– Variety of Irish language courses across tertiary
education institutions
• Irish language medium schools
– Scoileanna Gaeltachta in Irish speaking areas
– Irish medium schools outside the Gaeltacht
• 144 Primary schools
• 36 Secondary schools

5. Open Educational Resources
Definition:
“teaching, learning and research materials in any medium,
digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have
been released under an open license that permits no-cost
access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no
or limited restrictions.”
(UNESCO, 2012: 1)

6. OER and Less-commonly Taught Languages
• OER are viewed by Blyth (2013: 3) as allowing
stakeholders to create their own ‘knowledge ecology’.
• This is of particular relevance to LCTLs, where
economies of scale of learners and teachers may be
potentially limited.

7. OER and Less-commonly Taught Languages
• Summary from LangOER project:
– “Shortage of freely accessible resources in less used
languages (and social connectivity as a response)” (LangOER,
2014)
– “Reluctance to use OER in languages other than the native
language” (ibid)
– “OER as means to face cultural/linguistic hegemony” (ibid)

8. The Common European Framework of
References for Languages (CEFR)
• The CEFR framework “designed to provide a
transparent, coherent and comprehensive basis for the
elaboration of language syllabuses and curriculum
guidelines, the design of teaching and learning materials,
and the assessment of foreign language proficiency.”
(Council of Europe, n.d.)

9. CEFR and LCTLs
• The CEFR provides LCTLs, as for other languages, with a meta-framework to
communicate competences and proficiencies as well as providing a mechanism to
benchmark linguistic outcomes.
• The application and implementation of the CEFR varies greatly across LCTLs (Lotti,
2007).
• The purposes for which CEFR were most commonly used, according to Lotti (2007: 14-
15) were:
– Curriculum development
– Production of textbooks and educational material
– Language testing
– To a lesser extent, language learning continuity

10. The CEFR and Irish language education
• The proliferation of the CEFR within teaching and
learning of the Irish language can be described as
limited.
• Lotti’s (2007) report into the take-up of the CEFR in
LCTLs “it was not possible to gather enough information
about the language education situation for Irish in
Ireland” (10).

11. The CEFR and Irish language education
• Changes in CEFR proliferation the last 7 years:
– Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge known as TEG (The European Certificate in Irish) has
made significant use of the CEFR. Individuals who successfully complete the TEG
exams can receive a general language proficiency certificate specifying their CEFR
proficiency level.
– The National Qualifications Authority of Ireland asserts that students who pass
language subjects in the post-primary terminal examinations (The Leaving
Certificate) will have achieved B1 (NQAI, 2007, p. 8).
– Core syllabuses for the teaching of Irish at third level is benchmarked at learners
achieving B2 and C1 on its completion (Walsh & Nic Eoin, 2010).
– The Teaching Council of Ireland stipulation that prospective post-primary teachers
must demonstrate B2.2 proficiency in the European language they wish to teach
(Irish Teaching Council, 2013).

12. OER* and Irish language
Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge
Source: http://teg.ie/gaeilge/teagasc.htm Accessed: 20th August 2014

13. OER* and Irish language
www.teagascnagaeilge.ie
Source: http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/irish_syllabus/teacsanna-fise.php Accessed: 20th August 2014

14. OER and Irish language
multidict.net
Source: http://multidict.net/clilstore/index.php Accessed: 20th August 2014

15. OER and Irish language
SpeakApps
• The aim of SpeakApps project is to create a free
and open source online platform that gathers
ICT-based applications and pedagogies to
practice oral skills online. (SpeakApps,2014).

16. SpeakApps

17. OER and Irish language: SpeakApps
• Outputs for this phase of the project (relevant to this
paper):
– Continue with task development
– Attract more users of the SpeakApps resources and
tools by running teacher training workshops.

18. Gaps that have come to light:
Assessment and the CEFR
• Teachers wishing to use SpeakApps tasks and tools for assessment
purposes, summative or formative or a combination of both.
• The CEFR proficiency levels are becoming increasingly relevant in
assessment design to conform with national and institutional requirements:
– registration with the Teaching Council
– matriculation on postgraduate teaching-oriented courses.
• To ensure criterion-related validity of tasks an inventory of the forms,
morpho-syntactic elements and phonetic and intonation skills needs to be
prescribed to the various levels of the CEFR in Irish.

19. Gaps that have come to light:
Task-Based Langue Learning and Task Creation
• Recognition in Irish language education sector on the value of tasks
based learning, see Walsh & Nic Eoin (2010) and NCCA (2014).
– Task-based learning should facilitate a learner’s current and
future communicative needs (Byram, 2008).
• Difficult to create valid tasks:
– in the absence of a task-based needs analysis of the Irish
language sector.

20. Why the CEFR is important to creating tasks in the
Irish language?
• An adaptation of the CEFR to Irish would:
– illustrations of the type of language activities learners should be
engaged in
– Illustrate principal domains in which the language is used would
underpin task creating
• This, in turn, would:
– allow for better task creation
– better use of the SpeakApps OER by Irish teachers
– contribute to the growth in Irish language education

21. Sources
• Blyth, C. (2013). LCTLs and technology: The promise of open education. Language Learning & Technology. 17(1), 1-6.
• Bradley, L., & Vigmo, S. (2014). Open Educational Resources (OER) in less used languages: a
• state of the art report. LangOER consortium http://langoer.eun.org/
• Byram, M (2004). Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. New York: Routledge.
• Central Statistics Office. (2014). http://www.cso.ie/en/index.html
• Council of Europe, (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment.
• D’antoni, S. (2009). Open educational resources: Reviewing initiatives and issues.
• Gimeno, A., Ó Dónaill, C., & Zygmantaite, R., eds. (2013). Clilstore Guidebook for Teachers. Retrieved from:
http://www.languages.dk/archive/tools/guides/ClilstoreGuidebook.pdf
• Hylén, J. (2006). Open educational resources: Opportunities and challenges. Proceedings of Open Education, 49-63.
• Johnstone, S. M. (2005). Open educational resources serve the world. Educause Quarterly, 28, 15.
• Lotti, B. (2007). Investigation into the Use of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in Regional and Minority Language
Education. Retrieved from: http://www.mercator-research.
eu/fileadmin/mercator/publications_pdf/CEFR%20in%20regional%20and%20minority%20language%20education.pdf
• Martinez, M. (2010). How a New Generation of Teachers Will Change Schools. The Phi Delta Kappan, 91, 74-75.
• National Qualifications Authority of Ireland. (2007, December) Towards the establishment of a relationship between the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages and the National Framework of Qualifications. Retrieved from:
http://www.nqai.ie/documents/reltionshipbetweenCommonEuroF-W.doc
• Teaching Council of Ireland. (2013, October). Curricular Subject Requirements (Post-Primary)-For persons applying for registration on and after 1
January 2017. Retrieved from: http://www.teachingcouncil.ie/_fileupload/Registration/Subject%20Criteria%20from%20January%202017.pdf
• Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge. (2006). About TEG Retrieved from: http://teg.ie/english/about_teg.htm
• Tuomi, I. (2013). Open Educational Resources and the Transformation of Education. European Journal of Education, 48, 58-78.
• Smith, A. N. & Casserly, C. M. (2006). The Promise of Open Educational Resources. Change, 38, 8-17.
• UNESCO (2012) 2012 Paris OER Declaration. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/WPFD2009/English_Declaration.html
• Walsh, J. & Nic Eoin, M. (2010). Siollabas nua Gaeilge don chéad bhliain ollscoile. Teagasc na Gaeilge, 9, 13-23.
• Zourou, K,. (2014 ), Why do OER matter for less used languages? http://blogs.eun.org/langoer/2014/07/11/why-do-oer-matter-for-less-used-languages/