Lexiway Online: A Revolutionary Approach to Language Teaching

Lexiway Online is a web-based application that allows teachers and volunteers to teach language classes using the Lexiway teaching methodology, which is especially effective with absolute beginners. The teacher has all the programming, lessons, routines, practice and material needed in one place. All material is illustrated and is also used for first language literacy. It can be used without difficulty in multilingual and culturally diverse classes.

Lexiway Online responds to an essential social need: linguistic inclusion, especially in contexts of migration, integration or social vulnerability. 

Not being able to communicate is an insurmountable barrier to access education, employment or community life. FISI’s 2022 annual report on the “Situation of migrants and refugees in Spain” cites the lack of literacy and reading and writing skills as the main reason why Spanish learning processes are slower and it is difficult to advance employability through training. Many teaching programs lack a methodology that is truly adapted to absolute beginners and often lack literacy skills, leading to frustration, dropout and low effectiveness for both learners and teachers.

Lexiway offers a structured and proven methodology designed specifically for those who have never studied the language. Through an inductive and multisensory approach, Lexiway allows students to acquire the fundamentals of the language (phonology, basic vocabulary, essential structures) in a natural way, without the need for complex grammatical explanations, prior knowledge or, of course, the need to know how to read, which they will learn naturally. In the first 100-120 hours of class, all the phonology and structural basics needed to start confidently in the language are covered, while the literacy process begins.

On an organizational level, the Lexiway Online website facilitates the execution of the classes, supporting the teacher at all times. Many teachers working in NGOs, social programs or multicultural environments do not have the resources or knowledge to prepare effective lessons for beginners. Lexiway Online guides the teacher step-by-step through the lesson with materials, routines, activities and examples. This allows any organization to offer high quality classes without relying on linguistic experts or costly and extensive training.

The solution requires an internet connection, computer and screen (preferably interactive, although it can be a monitor or large TV).

The teacher connects to the web application with his/her username and password. The classes are developed by projecting or showing the material of the application on a large screen while the teacher executes the didactic routines, accompanying the projected material with the techniques established in the methodology. In this way, the teacher is provided not only with the material, but also with the didactic solutions to be able to teach effectively.

The digital and economic gap is reduced, since students do not use the application directly and teachers only need basic computer equipment and a screen, without the need for books or materials for the students.

Session data is recorded to reduce bureaucratic work and facilitate the control of classes, allowing the substitution of teachers without affecting the pace of classes, as well as a correct monitoring of students’ progress.

According to INE data, there are more than 6 million foreigners in Spain, many of whom have difficulty integrating due to language barriers. Organizations such as the Red Cross, CEAR, Caritas or UNHCR carry out thousands of language courses every year to facilitate the inclusion of these people. Lexiway Online can multiply the impact of these initiatives with a scalable, effective solution focused on the most vulnerable: absolute beginners without literacy in heterogeneous groups without a common language.

The problem Lexiway Online solves is structural: most teachers lack tools that provide a complete, coherent and proven teaching sequence for teaching absolute beginners. The result is students who move forward with fundamental gaps in their understanding of the language and do not reach a minimum level of survival after months and years in the host country. The impact of Lexiway, at the individual level, has been considerable on people at risk of exclusion who have seen their professional possibilities multiply by learning a new language. The objective, at a social level, is to democratize access to quality education, allowing teachers without specific pedagogical training to teach quality classes from day one, and this is extensible to any language.

The implementation of Lexiway Online is especially relevant for social initiatives that tend to have few resources, such as liaison and welcome classrooms and other language integration projects like Plan PROA+, but it is applicable for absolute beginners in any context and can improve the quality of teaching in thousands of classrooms. This reduces frustration dropout rates, allowing students to acquire key competencies for their academic and personal development in a reduced time.