Sidewalk Fail is a humanistic oriented educational multimedia project which includes video, audio, music, and text-based content. It’s main aim is to provide English as a Foreign or Second Language (EFL/ESL) students with a lesson that promotes civic responsibility and engagement, as well as citizen journalism.

The teaching approaches combines integrated-skills work and as aspects of ‘social emotional learning’ to teach empathy for citizens who require special needs with regards to mobility, such as the physically disabled, the visually impaired, and the elderly.

The context of the lesson addresses sidewalks and pedestrian paths that are hazardous and inaccessible because of their poor condition due to government neglect, poor city planning and obstructions such as parked cars left by indifferent drivers.

The lesson tasks include, video work, integrated reading and listening comprehension, integrated reading and writing work, integrated pronunciation and sentence syntax work that is music based, and theme-based vocabulary and ‘use of English’ tasks. Speaking practice is facilitated through pair work tasks and class-level discussion with the teacher.

The lesson as a whole also serves as a call to action for a ‘citizen journalism’ type class project to address other local issues or problems.

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