ABCi - The Austrian Bilingual Classroom Initiative

Info

ABCi is a charity outreach promoting language learning, cultural exchange and fostering understanding between English-speaking countries and Austria.

Geschichte

ABCi is an Austrian NPO bringing together Austrian children and English native-speaking volunteers to form a bilingual learning environment by means of linguistic immersion, cultural exchange and foreign sports that promotes the everyday use of English in Austrian classrooms and will provide every child in Austria with an English project day including elements of language, culture and sport by the year 2020. ABCi also aims to provide in-service CLIL training for all interested teachers in Austria, fair wages for our teachers, and professional development for our volunteers. ABCi encourages students to become supporting members of the association while fostering ties with government, community and business leaders.

Unsere Aufgabe

ABCi is an Austrian NPO acting as a cultural exchange between English-speaking countries and Austria by bringing people from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia into Austrian classrooms to foster understanding between those cultures. Field staff and trainees bring not only the language, but just as importantly, the authentic culture and sport from their English-speaking countries with them as well. ABCi has a special focus on bringing free English projects to rural and often otherwise overlooked children in alpine regions.


ABCi’s mission is to bring together Austrian children and English native-speaking ESL teachers to form a bilingual learning environment by means of linguistic immersion, cultural exchange and foreign sports that promote the everyday use of English in Austrian classrooms and will provide every child in Austria with an English project day including elements of language, culture and sport by the year 2020. The English Teacher Training College and its associated Bilingual Classroom Initiative (ABCi) is not a private school or language institute and does not provide language courses or private tutoring. The projects that take place in Austrian schools are as much a cultural exchange as they are a "language lesson" and the methodology which our NPO promotes is communicative: project teaching,active learning are uses among other communicative learning methods. Our initiative primarily uses project work and active learning to improve English language speaking competences from A1 to A2 in the areas of “Zusammenhängendes Sprechen und an Gesprächen teilnehmen” and from A2 to B1 in “Hören” using a mixture of language activities, songs, games and speaking-focussed exercises. These are the competences required for the USE of English in everyday life.

ABCi projects include cultural elements of music, history, and geography explained by native speakers from English-speaking countries. ABCi exposes Austrian children to foreign sports encouraging them to “learn by doing” while becoming more active and healthy. ABCi also aims to provide in-service CLIL training for all interested teachers in Austria, fair wages for our teachers, and professional development for our trainee teachers. ABCi encourages students to become supporting members of the association while fostering ties with government, community and business leaders.


In the 2016-2017 school year, native speakers from the college will give free English language, culture and sport projects to over 80,000 Austrian children while working closely with almost 2,000 teachers from more than 700 Austrian schools, demonstrating innovative methods to increase speaking competences in the classroom. At the same time, training over 75 new ESL teachers in the cutting edge methodologies required to best teach English as a foreign language. This 2015-2016 school year will also see over 7,000 new members join to support these activities and help bring these 75 native-speaking ESL teachers from English-speaking countries to Austrian classrooms and to reach ABCi’s goal to reach every pupil in Austria with native speaking ESL teachers from English-speaking countries by the year 2020.

Join us to help complete our mission.

Etikett

Bilingual Classroom Initiative ABCi
Bahnhofstraße 13
4655 Vorchdorf
AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 7614 21499
Email: [email protected]
www.abci-english.at