SIMOLA: Helping language learners bridge the gap

Mobile and ubiquitous learning technologies provide the opportunity for students of foreign languages living in a target language country to bridge the gap between classroom teaching and experience of using language in context. These technologies can be used in the contexts in which the language learner needs to apply his/her language skills for producing or interpreting language. The SIMOLA (Situated Mobile Language Learning) project, funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme, is developing a mobile phone application that enables students to collect, annotate, and tag interesting or puzzling language- and culture-related content found in everyday life, including text, images, and other media, and to upload these content items to a repository. From the repository, the information can be syndicated, e.g. via RSS feeds/widgets integrated into websites, blogs and profile pages, and alerts to subscribing mobile phones. The mobile application is complemented by a Web interface more appropriate for extensive editing and extensive text-based communication, thus combining the affordances of the two platforms. In this paper we describe the thinking behind the project, which is being evaluated with a) higher education students and b) adult immigrants, in six European countries and in Japan.