We were privileged to host the first visit to Newcastle last week of Dr Jennifer Eddy, Associate Professor and Programme Director for World Language Education at Queens College, City University of New York. International Newcastle’s CEO, Declan Baharini, and the languages lead for schools at Newcastle City Council, Sarah Edgar, spent time discussing Dr Eddy’s inspiring approach to designing curriculum activities for language learners, which are practical, task-based, real world scenarios, which can be adapted for any stage of language learning and any language.
Dr Jennifer Eddy explores how insights from multiple fields—such as business, health, science and the arts can develop deeper, real-world language use for meaningful interaction. In seminars and Professional Learning Community projects in the US and the UK, Jenny uses exemplars with pupil outcomes for transition across levels within disciplinary themes.
“Through these tasks, learners solve problems and create products with value beyond the classroom. Pupils develop confidence to use language they own right now to mediate for others between, among, across and within languages and cultures.
The tasks empower learners at all levels to engage with content that underpins and reflects authentic, global communicative contexts. Through this framework, assessment and instruction are relevant and applicable, for optimal progression with creative language use beyond classroom exercise.“
Dr Jennifer Eddy
Associate Professor and Programme Director for World Language Education at Queens College, City University of New York
Declan Baharini and Sarah Edgar talked to Dr Eddy about the work they have been doing over the last five years, supporting and promoting languages in Newcastle and the North East through Newcastle City of Languages, the annual Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages, which they host and co-ordinate, as well as their partnership work on a regional toolkit around languages and careers with the North East Combined Authority. They explored how her approach could enhance and add value to this work, with the ultimate goal of increasing language take up and progression and empowering children and young people to gain essential skills for their future lives and careers.
Declan said:
“It was inspiring seeing Dr Eddy present her approach at the Language World conference in March. It was immediately clear that this would fit well with our ambitions to empower language teachers and inspire language learners. Giving pupils the opportunity to explore real-world topics across different subjects in the languages they speak and learn, is motivational and broadens their horizons, builds confidence and a wide range of communications and employability skills.
Speaking other languages is a superpower and we believe that Dr Eddy’s approach is something that can help children and young people unleash this. She has already had substantial success introducing this in Wales. Her visit to Newcastle gave us an opportunity to explore in depth how it might work here. We are keen to continue working with Dr Eddy to look at how we can introduce this approach into the City’s schools, engage employers to add value and enhance our work on developing a Languages and Careers Toolkit with the North East Combined Authority.”
Any schools interested in working with us on this approach, should contact sarah.edgar@newcastle.gov.uk in the first instance.
Further information and links
- Dr. Jennifer Eddy is Associate Professor and Programme Director of World Language Education at Queens College, City University of New York, where she has served on the faculty since 2003. Her program certifies teachers in 13 languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu. She teaches coursework in world language curriculum, assessment, research and program design.
- Her research and practice focus on curriculum design for transfer and intercultural communicative competence. For over 35 years, she has directed seminars and professional learning projects nationally and internationally for schools/universities/conferences on World Language/Modern Foreign Languages, English as an Additional Language, Heritage, Community and Indigenous language curriculum design.
- Dr. Eddy is frequent presenter at local, state, national, and international conferences. She works collaboratively with teachers to develop curricular tasks across levels, buildings, and schools via thematic, cultural content in diverse educational settings with teachers of all languages.
- Her latest book, Teacher as Curriculum Designer for Transcultural Communicative Competence (Bloomsbury: 2025) features World Language teachers of Multilingual Learners in Wales, UK who when faced with new curricular guidelines, must design for all levels for the first time.