The former student of the Faculty of Education Sciences, Joan Chirivella, has won the John Mc Dowell Awards, presented by the Association of English Teachers of Catalonia (APAC) for his Final Degree Project titled “The Need for Focus on Form (FoF) in an English Immersion Context. The Case of Writing for 3rd Graders”, supervised by lecturer Helena Roquet. The jury chose this project in category A, which recognises research carried out by teachers or trainee teachers in schools. 

The award-winning project consists of a longitudinal study that explores the conditions that must be met for students enrolled in an English immersion programme to develop high levels of written proficiency. “The study incorporates the statistical evidence gathered during the field study regarding the requirements for students enrolled in an immersion programme to develop written proficiency levels equivalent to the level of a native speaker, in primary school. In this sense, students must be exposed to a communicative environment in which they receive a massive input from the target language and have multiple opportunities to use it”, explains Chirivella.

Joan Chirivella is a Primary Education who graduated in 2021, and is currently pursuing a Double Degree in Primary Education at UIC Barcelona. "To receive recognition of this magnitude for a project is always an achievement, on both a personal and professional level. Frankly, this award is an incentive to continue my education in the area of applied linguistics and to continue my research on language acquisition in schools”, he concludes.