Latest News
December 2003 | Slovenia |
The Slovene Ja-Ling project was awarded the European Label on 8 December 2003.
Contact:
Ms
Soca Fidler SLOVENIA
e-mail:
soca.fidler@guest.arnes.si
April 2003 | Belgium |
Conference-debate on language awareness - April 30, 2003, University of Liege, Belgium
(This document is approximately 3 MB. The downloading time might be long.)
The booklet can be ordered at SPE (link to the order form on our website) for 8 Euros (porto included for Belgium).
Contact:
Mme
Christiane Blondin
Université de Liège
Service de Pédagogie expérimental
Boulevard du Rectorat, 5 Bât. B32
B-4000
Liège
BELGIQUE
Tel:
+32 4 366 20 59
Fax:
+32 4 366 28 55
e-mail:
January 2003 | Belgium |
Language awareness was one of the measures advocated both by the Youth Minister,
Mr Jean Marc Nollet and by the parliamentary rapporteur, Mr Didier van Eyll.
The text of the Minister's speech is available (in French) on the Youth Ministry
website at http://www.ministre-enfance.be/evlang.html
The text
of the parliamentary report and the
minutes of the parliamentary debate are also available (in French).
It is also noteworthy that Mme Véronique Waterschoot, the advisor to the Ministerial
cabinet attended the meeting of the partners involved in Ja-Ling Comenius in
Freiburg on 17-18 January. She was accompanied by Cathérine Mattar, who has
been appointed by the Ministry to pilot the "language-awareness" approach
in Belgium (under the authority of Christiane Blondin, Department of Experimental
Pedagogics, Liège University).
Contact:
Mme
Christiane Blondin et Cathérine Mattar
Université de Liège
Service de Pédagogie expérimental
Boulevard du Rectorat, 5 Bât. B32
B-4000
Liège
BELGIQUE
Tel:
+32 4 366 20 59
Fax:
+32 4 366 28 55
e-mail:
Cabinet
du Ministre JM. Nollet
Ministre de l'enfance
Communauté Française de Belgique
9-13 rue Belliard
B- 1040 Bruxelles
Tel :
+32 2213 35 48
Fax:
+32 2213 35 49
e-mail: cabinet.nollet@cfwb.be
September 2003 | Training |
"Découvrir
à l’école primaire la diversité des langues et des cultures"
"Discovery
of language and cultural diversity in primary school"
Language
awareness distance training for primary school teachers and their instructors.
Université du Maine, France - September 2003
This training is only available in French
November 2002 | Articles from Belgium |
Several months ago, Michel Candelier was contacted by the secretariat of Jean-Marc Nollet, Minister of basic education for the French-speaking community in Belgium, who informed him of the Minister’s interest for the language awareness approach developed by the Ja-Ling programme.
A delegation of the administration then attended the closing meeting of the Evlang programme, which took place in February 2002 in Neuchâtel.
Recently, a Belgian delegation, led by the Minister, went to Geneva and visited classes, before taking part in several conferences. Details of the Minister’s visit can be found in the newspaper article.
An experiment will be started in Belgium at the start of the next school year.
*Articles only available in French
October 2002 | Ja-Ling in Guyana |
Michel Candelier went to Guyana last October, from the 2nd to the 12th. In Kourou
and in Saint-Laurent du Maroni, he visited several classes in which teachers
introduce their pupils to language diversity, and in particular the languages
spoken throughout Guyana. During a seminar organised by the IUFM, he presented
the language awareness approach to the teacher-training staff and persons in
charge of education (cf. the press cutting available by clicking on this link).
He also took part, with Jacqueline Billez (Université Stendhal Grenoble 3),
in the supervision of a Language and Culture in Provinces Licence course during
which he presented the language awareness approach.
Following this visit, work groups will be set up with the support of the IUFM, and their aim will be to experiment the approach and to develop materials specifically adapted to the reality in Guyana (under the supervision of Christiane Collin, IUFM and the help of Michel Launey, linguist, IRD of Cayenne). Martine Kervran (co-ordinator for Ja-Ling France) and Claire de Goumoens (Geneva, Ja-Ling Switzerland) will also go to Guyana next March, to supervise a seminar that is part of the in-service teacher training.
25.10.2002 | Jaling Meeting, Graz |
The
minutes from the September 2002 Ja-Ling meeting in Graz are now available: Réunion
Ja-Ling-Graz 13-14/09/02
A translation in English will
be available in the near future.
Also available for you to fill out, is the Country
report 2002. It must be sent before November 6th
2002 to:
the coordinator of your network, and to the member of the coordination team in charge of youur network (Janina / Mercè / Ingelore)
Aurélie
Michel Candelier
as well as the Final Questionnaire for teachers.
09.07.2002 | Jaling in Graz, Austria |
We
designed questionnaires and found out that in our school 12 different mother
tongues are spoken: German Albanian, Spanish, Bosnian, Croatian, Roumanian,
Turkish, Kurdish, Punjabi, Arabic, Twi und Bini.
Then
we compared the different languages and the pupils found out that some languages
are very alike (e.g. Bosnian and Croatian) but some are very different.
Some have a different handwriting (e.g. Twi) and the Arabic language is
written from the right to the left and has totally different letters.
We
worked on “politeness” and compared different ways of greeting in different
cultural backgrounds:
What do you say and what do you do when you see your mother the first time
in the morning?
What do you say and what do you do when you meet friends, relatives or adults?
How do you say “goodbye” in your mother tongue?
How do you say “please” and “thank you”?
Out of this language material we produced games such as memory, dominoes and quizzes.
On 20th June, 2002 we organised a Language & Culture Project Day.
In
the first three lessons of the day pupils of the fifth and sixth grade focussed
on Europe. They worked on non-verbal language, had a crash course in Croatian
and compared “Schweizerdeutsch” and “Deutsch als Hochsprache” with the Styrian
dialect.
The
pupils of the seventh and eighth grade focussed on Africa. They got an introduction
to Arabic handwriting and learned to sing gospel songs in Twi and English.
One group worked on a dance to the song “body language” by Queen.
At eleven o’clock the work was presented to interested pupils, parents and teachers. An exhibition of the work could be looked at, and an international buffet was offered by the pupils. It all ended with an international party.
Working
plan for next year:
Experimental work and evaluation:
The
HS Dr. Renner will start the experimental work at the beginning of the schoolyear
in September 2002. ( 7 classes, 140 pupils,
5 German teachers)
There
are also interested teachers in other schools to take part in the experimental
work. (6 schools and teachers).
Diffusion:
For
the 25th of September I am organising a teacher inservice training for Styrian
teachers, which is already granted by the “Landesschulrat”.
One
more inservicetraining for Grazer teachers can be held in winter granted
by the “Pädagogischer Beirat”.
In the teacher training at the “Pädagogische Akademie am Hasnerplatz” I can present the Ja-Ling project.
10.09.2001 | Eric Hawkins in the Ja-Ling website |
An article by Eric Hawkins : Foreign Language Study and Language Awareness is now available in the Articles section.