The digital auxiliary of ready-to-use classroom resources within the eTwinning project “A Song for Our Souls in an English-Speaking World”

Music for Emotional and Linguistic Development - A collaborative didactic auxiliary for eTwinning

In February 2026, a dedicated team of teachers and students from three European schools collaboratively designed and implemented a digital auxiliary of ready-to-use classroom resources within the eTwinning project “A Song for Our Souls in an English-Speaking World”. Rooted in music-based pedagogy and supported by interactive platforms such as LearningApps, Voki, Wordwall, Kahoot, and Livresq, the initiative fostered linguistic competence, intercultural dialogue, emotional literacy, and digital innovation. The project activity illustrates how carefully structured educational technology, when anchored in meaningful content, can enhance both teaching practice and student learning outcomes.

The methodological framework integrated transdisciplinary instruction, collaborative authorship, and formative digital assessment, offering a replicable model for contemporary European classrooms. The project set out to demonstrate that music operates as a complex semiotic system, bringing together language, emotion, rhythm, and cultural identity. In the context of foreign language education, songs were used to strengthen phonological awareness, enrich vocabulary, support pragmatic competence, and increase learner motivation. From a socio-constructivist perspective, the collaborative analysis of musical texts fostered dialogic learning and intercultural sensitivity, positioning the participating students as active interpreters rather than passive recipients of knowledge.

These principles were translated into structured, technology-enhanced learning sequences inspired by internationally and nationally significant songs. Each partner school developed resources based on culturally representative musical texts, reinforcing pluralism and shared European values. The digital auxiliary includes vocabulary enrichment activities through Wordwall and LearningApps, grammar consolidation embedded in authentic communicative contexts, Kahoot quizzes for formative assessment, and Voki avatars presenting both reflective and persuasive monologues. The design enables differentiated instruction: some learners can concentrate on lexical and structural analysis, while others can engage in creative, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary tasks, including video reflections, and class discussions. This flexibility increases engagement and strengthens communicative fluency, particularly in speaking activities framed by emotionally meaningful content.

The educational impact of the project is most evident in the students’ linguistic development and intercultural competence. Authentic musical texts provided rich and memorable input, improving lexical retention, refining pronunciation, and enhancing prosodic awareness through rhythm and repetition. The recurring structures of song lyrics facilitated implicit grammar acquisition, allowing the Romanian, Polish and Turkish students to internalize syntactic patterns naturally. At the same time, the inclusion of American, Romanian, and Polish musical repertoires encouraged comparative cultural analysis and deepened intercultural communicative competence. The learners did not simply practise English, they explored the values, metaphors, and collective experiences embedded in diverse cultural expressions.

Equally important was the project’s contribution to the students’ mental wellbeing as the music-centered activities created emotionally supportive learning environments in which the learners felt confident expressing personal experiences and viewpoints. Reflective discussions, interpretative tasks, and creative outputs enabled the students to articulate emotions in English with increasing assurance, thereby reducing the anxiety frequently associated with foreign language production. By integrating socio-emotional learning with language acquisition, the project positioned music as both a cognitive catalyst and a means of fostering resilience, empathy, and emotional awareness within the classroom community.

From a pedagogical perspective, the initiative exemplifies digital innovation grounded in methodological coherence. The integration of interactive platforms supported formative assessment, differentiated instruction, and gamified engagement without compromising academic rigor. Immediate feedback mechanisms, collaborative content creation, and structured digital tasks promoted learner autonomy and sustained motivation. The resulting digital auxiliary is reusable, adaptable and ensures sustainability beyond the initial project phase, allowing other educators to integrate the digital resources into varied curricular settings.

The collaborative dimension of the eTwinning framework significantly enhanced the project’s transformative potential. The teachers co-designed instructional materials, while their students co-created interpretative and creative outputs, fostering shared responsibility and intrinsic motivation. This distributed authorship model strengthened professional dialogue among educators and cultivated a strong sense of ownership among learners. As a replicable model characterized by interoperable digital tools, coherent methodological sequencing, and alignment with competence-based curricula, the eTwinning project “A Song for Our Souls in an English-Speaking World” can serve as an example for other school communities. By integrating art, language, technology, and intercultural exchange, it demonstrates that music-based, digitally mediated instruction can generate meaningful, memorable, and future-oriented educational experiences, reaffirming the school’s role as a space where creativity, innovation, and human connection converge with purpose.