From autumn 2022 until March 2023 we, the students of the BFS2A, and the students of the BFS2B worked on the project “I speak E(nglish)!”. This project did not only help our English teacher with her teaching qualification but first and foremost helped us gain new skills in different sectors, such as the English language, IT skills and creative competences, all of which will be useful in our lives outside of school.

During the English lessons in autumn, we read dialogues about people in different settings. We also got to know and used translation apps and websites on our phones, which we can use in our daily life should we need to translate something quickly. Then, the teacher gave us different topics and we brainstormed for ideas for dialogues about real life situations. Afterwards, we formed groups of two to three people and chose one or two of the topics to write a dialogue about in English. While inventing the dialogues we thought about real situations we have been in or situations which could happen to us. We started writing the dialogues and sometimes also used the translation apps. Then we handed in our dialogues and the teacher corrected them.

With the help of the IT teacher, we digitalised the dialogues. Then we corrected the mistakes in our texts, we learned how to edit a Word document to create a dialogue game with cards, which would be printed out later on, how to edit the document for the solutions to our dialogues and how to use the online platform “LearningApps.org” with which it is possible to create many games to make studying fun. We also tried the dialogue game on our phones with the QR-code we created after having finished to write them on the online platform.

After correcting our dialogues again on the Word documents and on the “LearningApps.org” page, the English teacher saved the link and created the final QR-code for the online version of the dialogues. These were then printed out and glued on the envelopes together with the logo, the project title and title of the different dialogues.

During the recreational education lessons, we made the envelopes ourselves. We folded pink and blue envelopes for the two classes using cardboard we already had at school. This way we were able to save money and, more importantly, it was a conscious sustainable decision not to buy plastic ones. A few students of our class also worked on the logo and on the decoration of the dialogue box. To create the dialogue box, we also thought about a sustainable solution using an old cardboard box of the A4 paper for the printer instead of buying a new one.

Also, the school caretakers helped with the preparation of the printed dialogues and the solutions to the dialogues by plasticizing and cutting the different dialogue sentences. They were then put into the labelled envelopes. The different cards with the dialogues and solutions were plasticised so that they can be used in the future by other students who want to learn how to communicate in English in a real-life setting too.

After having done all this, every group practised their own dialogue in class using the cards in the various envelopes, checking the solutions, and playing the online language game with the QR-codes on our phone. If we needed to change something we got one last chance to do so. This of course had to be changed in the printed and online version of the dialogues as well as in the solutions. Then, we acted our dialogue out in front of our own class and got feedback about the correct pronunciation of difficult words from our English teacher. At home we studied the dialogues by heart and got ready to act them out in front of the other BFS2 class. A few groups even organised some stage props for the role play on the day of the presentation.

On the day we had to present and act out our dialogue in front of the other class we were all a bit nervous, because we wanted to do our best and it took some courage to get up and speak in a foreign language in front of our schoolmates. However, all the groups did an amazing job: All the dialogues were very interesting to follow and some even very funny. Even though at the beginning we were not very happy about having to present our dialogues in front of the other class, in the end we were very happy and quite satisfied with how easy it was and how well we did. After the presentation of our own dialogues, we were able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon trying out all the different dialogues of the other groups.

At the end we evaluated the project with an anonymous and written feedback and a few students presented the project to the librarian, who was quite impressed by all our hard work.

Through the “I speak E!” project we learned many skills and competences in different sectors, and we also realised that dialogues are an important part of learning a language, especially if the language level is not yet very advanced. We think that doing this project was a good experience, because we could see how English is used in real life settings and not only in textbooks. We also brought daily life situations inside our classroom context, and this helped improve our English language competences. We are very happy with what we’ve created and are very proud we managed to pluck up the courage to act our dialogues out in front of our schoolmates form the other BFS2 class. Through this experience we managed to overcome our nervousness when speaking a foreign language in front of other people, we got to know the other students better, we improved our English pronunciation and also our English communications skills.

Written by the students of the BFS2A with the help of their English teacher.