Latest News

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

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: cblondin@ulg.ac.be

On Wednesday, 8 January the parliament of the French-speaking community debated the topic of language learning in the educational system.

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: catherine.mattar@ulg.ac.be et cblondin@ulg.ac.be

Cabinet du Ministre JM. Nollet  
Ministre de l'enfance  
Communauté Française de Belgique  
9-13 rue Belliard  
B- 1040 Bruxelles  
BELGIQUE
Tel :              +32 2213 35 48  
Fax:              +32 2213 35 49  
e-mail: cabinet.nollet@cfwb.be

"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

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.

                   
Article 1 *                     Article 2 *

*Articles only available in French

    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.

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

In the school year 2001/2002 a pilot project group of the class 2.b was working on different mother tongues of the school.

• 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.

Anna Grigoriadis

An article by Eric Hawkins : Foreign Language Study and Language Awareness is now available in the Articles section.