Estonia

Rapla Language School (a non-profit organisation) is the first and so far only language school in Rapla county, Estonia. Currently, we have 6 part-time employees and 60 adult learners.
Rapla is a small, peaceful town 50 km south of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. Among the learners of Rapla Language School are people both from advantaged and disadvantaged social groups; the latter including those who due to limited access to language learning facilities are less competitive on the labour market and less able to communicate with people from other countries, as well as the elderly and the unemployed.
In order to involve as many people in language learning as possible, we have set it as our aim from the onset of our NGO (in 2009) to be very flexible and innovative in the methodologies we use. We have a web site for introducing our NGO and its activities, including the courses available at any given moment. We have arranged several courses for mini-groups and individual learners, carried out entirely via Skype. As language teachers, we make use of web resources in our lessons and while preparing for them; and we encourage our adult learners to use the study resources available on the Internet; including, among others, online dictionaries and tasks, songs and games. Our adult learners are also guided to use such learning aids as CD-ROMs accompanying some books and dictionaries (including, e. g., dictation exercises). Thus, modern technology is already playing an important part in our daily activities. However, we are very interested in finding new ways of using technology in order to help people master languages.
By means of this project, we aim at helping our adult learners to improve their knowledge of English while giving them a chance to learn to know other cultures by working and learning together with the other European partners. We will participate in the project as a partner collaborating with other partners while planning the project and producing materials and web tasks to be shared. The students involved in the project will be adult learners of English. We will host the partners’ visit to Estonia and arrange our staff’s and learners’ visits to partner countries.