The ENACT app

Learn language through culture!

With the ENACT interactive player, you can learn a foreign language through the foreign culture by carrying out a cultural activity – our app shows you how. Learn Japanese while you’re making an origami boat or Turkish while you’re making a shadow puppet! With the ENACT author, you can create and share your own cultural activity in your own language! Create an account and let our app guide you.

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Shortlisted

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Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Updated May 2025

Web presence

2021

Established

12K 2024

150

Countries

Community

Target group

The long-term aim of the ENACT App is to build up a free bank of cultural language learning tasks, covering as many of the world’s languages, cultures, and countries as possible, to promote intercultural understanding and communication.It acts as a vehicle for promoting inclusive cultural exchange and understanding around the world.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

A universal problem for teachers is how to integrate culture with language and bring culture to life. Carrying out cultural tasks as an occasional, complementary activity offers opportunities on many levels to teachers around the world. It can be helpful in bringing the cultures and languages of countries to life and in preparing students for an overseas trip.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

The ENACT app will talk you through the stages of doing the activity, with photos, text, audio and video to help. In this way you can learn something about a country’s language and culture before you visit it, understand more about the languages and cultures of the world and produce something beautiful! Learning by physically engaging in an activity brings the language and culture to life and helps cross-cultural understanding.
You can also tell others about your own language and culture! With ENACT author, the ENACT materials you produce will enable users to learn aspects of your language and culture by carrying out the cultural task which you show them. Maybe you can teach people some English by showing them how to carve a pumpkin for Hallowe’en? So people all round the world can watch your materials and learn from you about your culture, language and activity.
Want to learn more? Like activities, leave comments, and send messages to other users to interact with real people.

How has it been spreading?

We developed the app with partners in Finland, Spain and Turkey. More than 150 cultural activities are now available for learning English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Catalan, Spanish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Persian, French, Welsh, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Korean, Maori, Marathi. The ENACT app (released February 2021) has already been used by over 18,000 people in 161 countries.

The long term aim of the ENACT Web App is to build up a bank of cultural language learning tasks available for free worldwide, covering as many languages, cultures and countries as possible, promoting cross cultural understanding and communication. The ENACT Web App and website provide a free infrastructure which can be used by all language and culture enthusiasts from around the world.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Simply go to https://enacteuropa.com/. You can learn a foreign language through the foreign culture by carrying out a cultural activity – our app shows you how. Learn Japanese while you’re making an origami boat or Turkish while you’re making a shadow puppet! Leave your feedback on the app. If you want to create your own activity, register and log in to follow our simple, step-by-step guidance.

Media

La Petite Crêperie schools’ competition involved 32 schools, with 3,479 children taking part! On 7 March the winning 2 schools (Marden Bridge and Hexham Middle Schools) visited ilab:learn for a Masterclass with Master Crêpe-Maker Guy Albe t! The children learnt French vocabulary using the ENACT web appand each had their own Crêpe made to order!

ENACT: learning language through culture

St Michael's Primary School pupils have fun learning Chinese! Year 5 pupils from St Michael's Primary School had a great time on Monday 15th July making Beijing Ice Candy or "Tanghulu" and practicing their Chinese calligraphy. The group donned aprons and chefs' hats in the digital kitchen to learn the names of the different fruits that they then dipped into hot sugar syrup.

Once again, we had some great entries for our annual ENACT Web App Prizes! Eve Navickaite GOLD prize winner for entry in a New Language: (Lithuanian). Sheline Kanjuthara Varghese GOLD prize winner for entry in a New Language (Malayalam).Katy Humberstone GOLD prize winner for entry in an Endangered Language (Cornish).

The British Chinese Language Teaching Society (BCLTS) held their 21st International Conference at Newcastle University.As part of the event, delegates were invited to come along to ilab:learn to see several ENACT activities in action, try activities themselves, and learn more about the app.

Our trainee teachers are at the end of their placements so on 10th June we invited them into iLab: Learn to experience two ENACT activities - making French pancakes and learning Chinese calligraphy. This gave them an insight into how language learners experience these activities.

Cassyni

Oxford University Talk on ENACT by Prof Paul Seedhouse

ENACT how to learn language through culture

Implementation steps

Try out the app

Go to https://enacteuropa.com/ and choose LEARN. With the ENACT interactive player, you can learn a foreign language through the foreign culture by carrying out a cultural activity – our app shows you how. Learn Italian while you’re making a Venetian carnival mask or Turkish while you’re making a shadow puppet! Your computer, smartphone or tablet will guide you through the stages of doing the activity through structured interactive content using photos, text, audio and video to help you.

Upload your own favourite cultural activity

You can also tell others about your own language and culture! With ENACT author (CREATE), the ENACT materials you produce will enable users to learn aspects of your language and culture by carrying out the cultural task which you show them. So people all round the world can watch your materials and learn from you about your culture, language and activity. The app guides you through a learning structure to prepare your cultural activity, choose vocabulary to learn, and provide assessment.