English Language Experience and Action

ELEA runs as a single two-week residential programme with a full daily schedule that alternates English language classes with action activities, so no one spends the summer sitting in a classroom. Participants are placed in two age bands, Youngers (12-14) and Olders (15-17), for lessons and activities, while classes themselves are grouped by CEFR level from B1 to C1, meaning a child is challenged at their own level of English while playing and exploring with the wider group. Lessons and workshops are organised around five 21st-century skills, each tied to a contemporary global issue and to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and UWC mission, and everything the students practise feeds into a final team task at the end of the fortnight. Between the fixed activity blocks come full-day excursions, and evenings are programmed too, with a Gala Dinner, an international show, a cinema evening on a full-sized screen, a giant quiz and a disco, all inside the College grounds. Free time is genuine but bounded, with students exploring designated areas of campus and using the communal and sporting facilities. What distinguishes the programme is the insistence that all of it, from bushcraft instructions to quiz answers, happens in English, alongside a minimum of sixty participants drawn from around the world.