Playful English Teaching and Beneficiary Satisfaction in a University Community Outreach Project in Milagro

Resumen

Community outreach can provide settings in which prospective teachers connect university coursework with the practical demands of teaching English. This study describes the implementation and beneficiary satisfaction of a university outreach project conducted in a parish community in Milagro, Ecuador, during 2025–2026. A retrospective descriptive design combined documentary analysis of programme records with a secondary analysis of aggregate satisfaction data. The documentary corpus included the approved project and execution contract, two individual activity logs, one individual final report, consolidated university participation records, and a subsequently developed methodological guide. The administrative records contained 38 university students across two cohorts, of whom 36 completed 96 practicum hours each. The selected documents described visual materials, songs, movement, games, guided oral exchanges and short written activities. In the satisfaction summary, each of five criteria contained 125 valid responses. Excellent ratings ranged from 82.4% for attendance to 88.0% for satisfaction of beneficiaries’ needs; no Inadequate ratings were recorded. Across the five criteria, 535 of 625 item ratings were Excellent (85.6%). These results document programme delivery and a favourable appraisal of the service, rather than measured gains in English proficiency. The study identifies practical connections between playful teaching, supervised community practice and the organisation of reusable materials, while showing why satisfaction, practicum completion and language learning require separate indicators.