It interested us to know what the factors are which lead to the success (or not success) in the learning of English as a foreign language. Not only the factors related with the educational systems, programming, school organizations, training of the teaching staff, etc, but also the more structural and environmental factors, such as television, school managements, inspectorate, external evaluations, reading habits, cultural family background,…
We made a comparative study of the situation in Catalonia and Spain with other European countries like: Finland, The Netherlands, France, Denmark, Belgium, and Portugal.
From each of these countries we had a very detailed report of the current state of their educational system and functioning operation (achieved across the data bases of Eurydice) and of the last update in August of 2008. We also created a Wiki so as to keep on working in a collaborative way among the members of the working team.
First we established comparative criteria among systems. Then some questions arose to lead us to elaborate some first working hypotheses and/or some first conclusions (age of beginning of the learning of English in schools, resources, TV programmes in original version, translated or subtitled, content subjects in English, levels attained in literacy...). At a second level we tried to carry out visits “in situ” in order to observe, to contrast, to compare... different schools of some of the mentioned countries, and to pick up information that we couldn't to consult directly from the official reports. Initialy we planned to carry out these studies at schools in Portugal, The Netherlands, Finland and Belgium.
The members of this team at the ICE of the UAB were:
Núria Biosca, Enric Calvet, Chrystel Cazorla, Anna Esteban, Emília Masdéu, Manuela Moledo, Antonio Orihuela, M. Carmen Pérez
