Category: europe

Today I attended the Trent and Tame Language Hub (TTLH) Primary Launch Event and was asked to share some ideas for European Day of Languages.

I’ve posted a few ideas in the past on my website – have a look at using a song or the Omniglot website – but felt it might be useful if I wrote up some of the ideas I shared in one place for those who weren’t there, and for those who were but would like a reminder!

European Day of Languages or EdoL (over recent years the o has been added to avoid misunderstanding!) is celebrated each year on 26th September. It is a Council of Europe initiative and has been running since 2001 and is celebrated across Europe with the aim to promote plurilingualism. Each year there is a focus. This year it is Languages for Peace. You can find out more on the website https://edl.ecml.at/ where there are competitions, resources and opportunities to join with learners across Europe to celebrate our linguistic diversity. This year they include the pronunciation of Irish names and a summary of Words of the Year from various countries. In previous years we’ve used Lara’s Journey and also quests involving the language stickers that are associated with the event.

September 26th isn’t far off the start of the school year so you need to plan ahead, even before you break up for the summer. There are lots of quick ideas that you can use to celebrate that can be the launchpad to bigger/wider initiatives. This is one (the only?) advantage of how soon in the school year it occurs. Below are a few that could create a buzz that can then be built upon.

Expanding on a few of those
– you can read about what happened at my school when we each class chose a language in this post from 2008! If you need some help with different languages, the Digital Dialects website is amazing. Also tap into languages known in your school community and ask children, parents and neighbours if they could support you.
– when dressing up, rather than ending up with a legion of French onion sellers and sevillanas dancers, why not ask learners to dress in the colours of or as the flag of a country, or in the national dress of that country, or as a famous person from that country. Stereotypes are worth discussing but not reinforcing!

Holding a Bake Off is great fun. We did it a few years ago and I had the pleasure of tasting every one of the more than 50 entries! The brief was to create a bake that either represented a country (flag, colours, in the shape of etc) or that came from another country. As you can see if you watch the compilation videos below, we had some amazing entries and the children really enjoyed it. They do love a competition! It was a shame that we couldn’t let the children eat the cakes due to allergy worries but children took them home (apart from the ones that made it to the staffroom!) It was lovely to see creativity in action but also to celebrate some traditional bakes from Sweden, Germany, Australia, Spain and India.

Another idea that worked well and also had a huge impact on the school was around celebrating linguistic identity and the ‘superpowers’ of many of our learners who already know two or more languages before they learn Spanish with us.

We used the Language Profile template on the Multilingualism in schools website and asked chidlren to consider their linguistic identity – whihc languages do they speak, have they experienced, do they feel a connection with or simply like or enjoy learning? Initially it seemed to many that they only wanted to add English but having talked about it with others, all sorts of feelings came to the surface including solidarity with eTwinning project partners, languages related to reading matter, and some interesting thoughts about being bilingual! This was coupled with finding out which languages were spoken by the children and adults in each class, and the creation of a poster for the door. This led to children learning that there weren’t the only speaker of their home language, and also the revelation of some hitherto unknown skills! Both of these activities feed well into Cultural Capital, British values and celebrating our diversity, all very high on the primary curriculum agenda.

Another idea on a similar theme is to hold a Celebration of Languages in which the learners are invited to share. We’ve had several of these, most recently as you can see above on Mother Language Day. Each time we’ve held the event we’ve had a mixture of songs and rhymes, role plays and greetings and even a clapping game this time. Sometimes children share their home language, sometimes a language that they’re learning or that is ‘in the family’ and sometimes learners have learned something specifically for the event. It takes guts to stand in front of your peers and speak, and I am often struck by how often children who are reluctant to speak in class volunteer to share. It’s quite humbling to see how they value these special language opportunities!

Perhaps you want an activity that can be completed over a week, a little at a time, or that can be set as a homework task, or even a competition. The British Council has a Great Languages Challenge that can be downloaded from the Resource section of their website. As you can see from the image above, it’s available in a language non-specific version as well as one for Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Irish, Mandarin and Welsh. You could ask classes to complete it with learners or groups of learners assigned certain tasks, or set levels for the number of tasks completed eg Bronze might be 8-12, Silver more than 13-17 and Gold for 19 or 20 of the 20 tasks. We awarded certificates for all attempts and small prizes like stickers, pencils, rubbers with books for those who had completed the task independently. We also celebrated and shared in assembly including a memorable rendition of Happy Birthday in Yoruba! Activities like this can count towards a British Council International School Award (ISA). You can find out more about how the requirement and how to apply (it’s free!) on the website but feel free to comment or message me if you need support as I’m a British Council Ambassador and have been trhough the process several times, most recently in 2022.

Last year the Global School Alliance held a competition to celebrate EdoL, asking learners to complete the sentence ‘For me, learning a language is…’ in any way that they wanted – using art, video, poem or song, writing an essay or creating a poster. Entries were uploaded to the GSA platform so all participating schools could share the results, and an award ceremony was held online to celebrate and congratulate the participants and winners. Some of the entries were amazing, and I was overjoyed that two of my pupils earned a ‘special mention’ in the Primary category for their entries. You can watch the video below – our bit is at 24 minutes! I’m sure that there will be another event in 2024 so keep your eye on https://www.globalschoolalliance.com/ for news. However, there’s nothing to stop you holding your own competition with the same sentence to be completed!

Perhaps you’d like to use EDoL to dip your toe into cross country links. A good way to do that is to explore the Global School Alliance. Once registered you can browse other registered schools, look at project ideas or post your own. It’s an excellent way to find a partner (or more!) for a short exchange – perhaps you could exchange a culture postcard from your schools, or meet online to teach other greetings, or work on a common theme of peace for example. The initial activity might be so successful that you want to take it further but equally it could be that short!

Let’s be honest, school life is busy and it’s not always easy to plan and/or fit in activities that can be done by classes but each year I make sure that we at least hold an assembly that celebrates EDoL. In fact, it’s now on the school calendar so I have little choice! If we’ve held a day or week of activities, we share what we have done and celebrate our learning. I’ve mentioned above our Celebrations of Language but we’ve also had ones that have been done in classes based around books – can you identify the titles of these books and the languages in which they’re written?

This year I took inspiration from the British Council resource Let’s Talk about Languages which begins with a song fromThe Little Mermaid in many different languages then has a guessing game based on the (literal) meaning of a variety of words including barbe à papa (Dad’s beard – candyfloss in French) and buwchgochgota (short red cow – ladybird in Welsh) I was inspired to continue on this theme and explore favourite words in English as well as other languages.

I shared some of mine – serendipity (English) and burbuja (Spanish for bubble) because I love the sound of the words, the untranslatable pesado in Spanish and so on. I was helped by a couple of books I have called What a Wonderful Word! and What a Wonderful Phrase! that revealed words like poronkusema which is the distance that a reindeer can walk without needing a wee (a popular revelation!) I asked staff for their favourite words and several shared, and then asked the children for theirs. Some had an immediate idea but I invited anyone who wanted to share their word to write it down and give it to me during the week. Below are some that I collated for an article I wrote about it for Languages Today, published by ALL.

There are many more things you could do to celebrate. I haven’t decided how we will mark EDoL in September yet but perhaps I’ll go back to past post and explore Silbo Gomero, a whistling language that is used on La Gomera. Whatever we do, I’m glad of the prompt to have a think and start planning.

If you have any ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

I’ll leave you with a couple of links to other people who’ve shared ideas and a video that could be used as an introduction to the day.
Nattalingo
Teaching Ideas (Some lovely ways of making it really cross curricular

And the answers:
We’re going on a bear hunt – Greek
The Hungry Caterpillar – Punjabi
Room on a broom – Italian
The Three Billy Goats Gruff – Turkish
Mr Tickle – Portuguese

Thanks to José García Sánchez in the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group for this lovely infographic/ map of European present givers. Whilst Christmas is past for most, Spain and those who follow the Orthodox calendar have another day or so before they receive their gifts on 6th January or Epiphany. I’ll certainly be thinking of activities to use this next year, perhaps preparing comprehension questions based around practising name of countries and / or nationalities but I’ll also be using it as soon as we go back to school as a way of eking out one last activity from the array of Christmas cards and greetings we received as part of our eTwinning projects.

Below are some images of our cards, temporarily taking over the Achievement Tree!

At about 1130am on Friday I was contacted and asked by UKEDChat if I wanted to write a guest blog post about the impact Brexit could/will have on language learning. I didn’t write it straight away for several reasons not least that I didn’t actually have time until very late that night to think. When I did, I wrote my personal reflection on the events and implications.

The post can be found on the UKEdChat website and the text is reproduced below:

My husband woke me this morning and asked if I wanted to know the result. I should’ve been known by his voice but when he said ‘It was Leave by 52% to 48%’ it hit me like a ton of bricks and I burst into tears.

My first thought was my friends and pupils and how some of them would now feel.

I am a language teacher and many of my friends and colleagues across the country are ‘native speakers’ e.g. French/Spanish/German nationals who teach their native language. Others fell in love and moved here to be with their partners. Some have lived in this country for many years and have never felt the need to go to the (not inconsiderable) expense of officially become British.  Many have British partners, children who have grown up here and consider themselves part of this country, working, paying taxes, contributing to their communities. They could not vote. You can read what one felt here.

The Referendum may have been about whether we stay in the EU or not, but the waters were unfortunately muddied by the issue of immigration.  As I turned on social media, my fears were confirmed. I wasn’t in school but I know that several children were aware of what a ‘Leave’ verdict could mean for their families.

My job as a language teacher isn’t just about teaching words, structures and grammar. It’s about a context for that language, be it in Spain or South America, France, Belgium, Senegal. It’s about culture, lifestyle, food that may be different to ‘our’ ways. It involves encouraging discussion of our differences to help us understand more about ourselves, and then the joy of seeing things from someone else’s perspective, celebrating that we’re not all identical.

Through eTwinning, Comenius, Comenius Reggio and Erasmus +, all funded by the EU, my school has changed over the last ten years to be the globally minded place that it is now.  Teachers have visited colleagues in Europe, we’ve received visitors and much work has been done online, via Skype and vieo conferencing.

So what will Leave mean?

My initial reaction was posted at 8:15am

This morning I am distraught. Can’t put it into words but can I just say to my many friends who now feel unwelcome in the country that is their home – I love you. Farage, Gove, Johnson et al do not speak for me and my family. I don’t know what the future holds but I know that as long as I have breath I’ll still be championing cooperation, understanding, compassion and celebrating diversity. “We have more in common with each other than things that divide us.

Taking my eldest son to a university open day gave me time to think and reflect. My conclusion?

My task hasn’t really changed. I will still teach Spanish the same way I always did. I will still see Intercultural understanding as a vital part of my role. I will still find ways to bring other countries into my classroom. It will be harder as there is uncertainty about what will happen to the wonderful programmes like eTwinning. As a school we will still celebrate the languages and cultures of our pupils as we did whilst people were voting in another building on our site. My son and others intending to study languages at university may find their year abroad harder to fund without Erasmus funding. I might get asked more often ‘why do we learn Spanish; everyone speaks English!’ but my answer will remain the same. If anything, I see my role as even more important than before. My son reminded me of the postcard that was on the shelf at the bottom of our stairs at home featuring the words of Nelson Mandela:

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

His point was that, given the number of treaties, agreements and the like that the United Kingdom  now need to renegotiate, language skills will be all the more important, a point born out by experience.

The Leave vote doesn’t mean that we are no longer European.  I am European, speaking several languages, having lived in three European countries and that hasn’t changed. Time will tell the full implications for languages and the global dimension; statements from The British Council and ALL make me more optimistic.  So whilst my tears have ceased, my determination has not and, judging by the comments on social media and in person, nor has that of my fellow linguists!

We may need to work harder for opportunities but …

Thanks to REAL (The European Network of Language Associations) for drawing my attention to the following;

The European Union has launched a drawing and writing contest for 8-24 year olds, in partnership with the European Youth Forum. The four winners will be invited by the Presidents of the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament, to be part of the official delegation of the European Union that will travel to Oslo to receive this year’s Peace Prize. The European Youth Forum will pre-select the 16 best entries for each age group (8-12, 13-17, and 18-24). A jury will select three of the final winners (one per age group) who will win a trip to Oslo. Participants can take part in the contest and propose entries on: www.peaceuropefuture.eu.

The question that they must answer?

In the youngest age group, 8-12 years old, entrants must draw their response (they can use a computer so I assume that includes mobile devices like iPads too!)

In the other two age groups, entrants have to ‘text’ their response in 120 characters – in any of the 23 official languages of the EU. This actually so that they can be retweeted with a hashtag #peace4EU according to the rules. All entrants are then allowed to expand on and explain their  drawing/text in 300 characters.

The competition is open to nationals of the EU (so that means my kids can enter even though we’re currently in non EU Switzerland!) but you need to get your skates on as the closing date is 25th November at midnight CET. Entry is online though so no need to worry about posting pictures!

An interesting report on Teaching Languages in schools across Europe was published a few days ago.

Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe 2012 is a joint Eurydice/Eurostat publication, produced in close cooperation with the European Commission. The report is based on four main data sources: Eurydice, Eurostat, the European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC), and the OECD’s PISA 2009 international survey. Eurydice data covers 32 countries (27 Member States, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Turkey) and takes the reference year 2010/11. [The report] contains 61 indicators and qualitative information describing the context and organisation of foreign language teaching, student participation levels as well as the initial and continuing education of foreign language teachers. In addition to giving a snapshot of the situation today, the report also presents several time series which are helpful in identifying trends in language teaching over recent years and past decades.

You can see the highlights of the report in the document below, or read the full version by clicking on the image on the left.

Some of the key points however are –

1. Students start learning foreign languages from an increasingly early age. It makes me really sad to see the UK block at 11 years old after all the hard work done to make it 7. And you can see that we’re far behind many other countries in Europe.

2. More students learn two foreign languages. Not in the UK though it seems.

3. English by far is the dominating foreign language in Europe. 

4. Very few students learn languages other than English, French, Spanish, German or Russian.

5. Students’ perceptions of the usefulness of a language is a motivating factor for learning – and English is by far seen as the most useful.  Perhaps this, and point 3, explain some of the UK’s language “apathy”? Trips are also pointed out as a motivating factor.

6. Teaching guidelines for foreign languages place equal emphasis on all communication skills – and yet both teachers and students make infrequent use of the target language in the classroom. Interestingly, the UK is not on the graphic for this section – I wonder why?

7. The Common European Reference Framework (CEFR) is becoming a main tool for defining student attainment levels. Also interesting to note that the UK is one of the few countries in Europe (along with Spain, Netherlands, French speaking Belgium and a few others) without an expected level of proficiency in a second language by school leaving age.

8. School reports difficulties filling vacancies for language teachers. I know a few great language teachers who would love a job!!

9. Few countries require teachers to spend an immersion period in the target language country. The UK does have recommendations about this, and also about the content of ITT. However, I think they could go further. You should have to visit regularly as well to keep ‘up to date’. Why not have funded sabbatical periods – even a week would be good – to revitalise your skills every two or three years? And I don’t mean a trip on which you’re supervising children, nor do I mean a week of sunbathing on the Italian riviera. Perhaps shadowing a colleague, or investigating something that interests you. And immersing yourself in a language and culture that you love.

I wonder if anyone who makes decisions about languages has read this report properly? Or have they just seen the ‘English is the most useful’ and thought ‘That’s Ok then’?

The Adidas advertisement featuring the Spanish ‘selección’ have the message El pasado no cuenta – Todo vuelve a empezar. The past doesn’t count. It’s all starting again.

Which it is!

httpv://youtu.be/JE3z0vVJDRk

And then they made another, with a similar message, but pointing out that La Furia Roja actually won in their away kit at the World Cup!

httpv://youtu.be/jjowT-C6s4s

Here’s the Eurocopa song by David Bisbal featuring Cali and El Dandee. Called No hay dos sino tres, it refers to the fact that Spain could win their 3rd Eurocopa (they are the holders from 2008 and also won in 1964) The first clip features lots of clips from the World Cup / Copa Mundial and ‘de motivación’ – to encourage the Selección in Polonia y Croacia.

Doing OK so far…

httpv://youtu.be/_949qd18BVA

And here’s the karaoke version

httpv://youtu.be/M1zLdmfofEc

One of the aspects of our Comenius Regio project that I have particularly enjoyed and that has given me great pleasure is the change in perceptions about being ‘foreign’ and by extension different.

Although pupils at WCPS are bright, and have had some contact with children in Spain previously, many still thought that every town in Spain was near a beach, that it was always hot, and that everyone steak and chips whilst speaking English. Their idea of a Spanish person was a lady with dark hair wearing a sevillanas dress or Lionel Messi (who isn’t Spanish!)

As one of the strands of the project was Intercultural Understanding, challenging and changing these perceptions has been key to the success of the project.

As pupils have met teachers from Barcelona in person, and children from Els Pins via Skype, and asked them questions, many things have dawned on them – for example,we all wear similar clothes, our food isn’t so different although we eat at different times and that we have many interests in common like sport and the environment. It’s also been noted that, whilst they do speak English quite well, people in Spain speak Spanish , but people in Barcelona also speak Catalan.

Now that we’re more aware about Spain- and India through Connecting Classrooms, being ‘different’ has become cool and there are several pupils who would never have ‘owned up’ to having another first language who are now wanting to share.

There’s always further to go of course and whilst this infographic is deliberately provocative, how many of the ‘perceptions’ can be identified as not just being held by Americans?

If we were to draw a similar map based on our perceptions, what would it look like?

Might be interesting to ask learners what they know and think, and then set about challenging the accuracy of their perceptions.

 

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It seems that only Portugal and France agreed with me, and, as it was pointed out by @frogphilp on Twitter this morning, I’m not a country – yet – but I quite liked the Spanish entry for Eurovision. At least she sang in her own language!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7CuPRMyd-c&feature=related

During the session on eSafety in virtual spaces, we were shown a video clip from the European Union’s Safer Internet Day (February 10th) resources.

Really interesting and powerful.

You can check out all the resources here and read more about blocking online bullying.