Why did you create this innovation?

A universal problem for teachers is how to integrate culture with language and bring culture to life. Carrying our 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.

How does your innovation work in practice?

Your smartphone or tablet 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.

How has it been spreading?

We developed the app with partners in Finland, Spain and Turkey. Materials are now available for learning English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Catalan, Spanish and Turkish.

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!