Transcript Presentation of the kit - European Centre for Modern Languages

ECML
LEA:Presentation of ‘The Language Teacher
Training Kit’
Presentation of the kit
contents
and
presentation of the activities
LEA project aims and objectives
The Kit:The materials and the activities promoting the
new model of language education
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The new model of language education promotes the development of plurilingual
and pluricultural competence, which refers to the ability to use language for
communication and to take part in intercultural interaction.
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Contrary to the old model of language education a learner is expected to use
and develop a proficiency (of varying degrees) in several languages and the
experience of several cultures. (Common European Framework for Languages,
Council of Europe, 2001,68).
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The materials and activities in ‘The Language Teacher Training Kit’, which aim at
training and awareness-raising, are prepared for language teachers & trainees
who traditionally focussed on the didactic procedures for teaching particular
languages. The kit aims at enriching language teacher education by developing the
abilities needed to promote linguistic and cultural diversity.
Table of Contents
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Rationale
Kit Orientations
Activities
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Linguistic and Professional Biography
Motivation, Attitudes and Beliefs
Let’s Meet Diversity
Incorporating Plurilingual and Pluri/Intercultural Awareness into English/Foreign
Language Teacher Education Curricula
Culture Awareness and the Development of the Pluricultural Competence
Awareness of Portuguese
Old and New Models of Language Education
Samples of the JaLing Project
Bibliography
Rationale
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The new linguistic policy (Council of
Europe, Strasbourg, 2003) affirms the
multilingual character of all the national
entities characterised by linguistic and
cultural diversity and redefines the role of
language educators.
In the light of these new orientations in
language education the LEA project
develops ‘a kit for language teacher
educators’, taking advantage of the
experience gathered during the JaLing
project.
The kit contains a set of teaching
materials with the aim to promote
awareness of plurilingualism and
pluriculturalism among the participants.
Further, it provides them with the
appropriate tools to introduce it among
language teachers/trainees and their
learners.
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The kit includes:
a) Rationale.
b) Procedures for motivating language
teachers and trainees to work with
language and culture diversity.
c) Activities and materials designed to train
language teachers and trainees in
language and culture awareness.
d) Sample activities and materials, which
language teachers and trainees can use in
their language classes, especially
materials aimed at incorporating a
plurilingual and pluricultural dimension into
the learning of some specific languages.
Kit Orientations
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This section of the KIT presents the TEMPLATE for the materials
prepared for language teachers and trainees as well as
guidelines and suggestions of content issues for building new
activities.
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All the new materials which will be prepared by the paricipants of
the LEA workshop will have to be related to the aims of the KIT.
The Rationale defines the new model of language education
viewed from two different Perspectives/Orientations: Individual
and Social on the one hand and Professional on the other.
Linguistic and Professional Biography
The activity:
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This activity focuses on the
self-reflection on one’s own
abilities, knowledge,
educational experience
(linguistic and didactic) and
attitudes as a language
educator.
It also reflects on the central
concepts of language
education.
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The participants work
individually, then in groups
and decide on their piorities in
defining the many
characteristics of a language
educator.The groups then
engage in presentations.
Developing instruments in
order to design linguistic and
professional biographies of
the groups.
Motivation, Attitudes and Beliefs
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The activities make language
teachers and trainees observe to
what extent they themselves can
influence learners’ attitudes
towards languages and cultures,
arouse their curiosity about
languages and strengthen the
motivation to learn them.
They are designed to make
language teachers and trainees
reflect on their new roles and on
the significantly modified aims of
language education.
The activities deal with the
following topics:
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Discussing in pairs and as a whole group
the concepts of Motivation and Attitudes.
Sharing experiences with the
partner/partners and building up group
conclusions as to what extent teachers can
have an influence on students’ motivation
and attitudes.
Discussing the issues which may motivate
and get class participants engaged in their
learning process and to what extent they
should be taken into account when
planning a plurilingual/pluricultural
curriculum.
Let’s Meet Linguistic Diversity
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The activities included in this
section aim to make language
educators view linguistic and
cultural diversity as a positive
feature of groups and societies. It
further develops awareness of the
new aims of language education,
which have to be modified, and
should promote plurilingualism and
pluriculturalism in language
learning.
They can serve as an example on
how to develop and evaluate
educational projects aiming to
achieve plurilingual and
pluricultural competence.
In particular:
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The activities are based on recordings
(and written transcriptions) of short
dialogues on the same topic in different
languages including rare, ‘exotic’ or
unknown languages.
They attempt to analyse language teacher
educators’ individual reactions when they
first listened to the dialogues and the
strategies they used to understand the
topic and the languages of the dialogues.
They make the groups of language
educators (composed of the teachers
teaching about the same age group) reflect
on whether it is possible to work with so
many ‘exotic’ languages in a class and how
to use those recordings in their own
teaching context.
Incorporating Plurilingual and Pluri/Intercultural Awareness into
English/Foreign Language Teacher
Education Curricula
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Both activities: Types of writing
systems and Families of
languages (for linguistics classes)
aim at enriching students’ knowledge
about languages in general. They are
based on the fragments of an old
Polish legend translated into 6
languages.
The activity: Clause negation in
English and in other languages (for
English grammar and/or language
classes) focuses on the development
of students’ plurilingual syntactic
competence. It is based on a sample
of English negative clauses and a
collection of the negative clauses
from the text of an old Polish legend
translated into 6 languages.
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The other two activities serve the
purpose of ‘Developing students’
plurilingual lexical competence’
and to show how one may try to
comprehend the meaning in many
languages without studying them.
The activities are based on a text
from the Internet and a certain
number of selected words
accompanied by their approximate
translations in other languages using
one of the electronic multilingual
dictionaries. The activities are
prepared for English language or
methodology classes, but depending
on the topic of a selected text, they
can be used in any other classes
within the language teacher
education curricula.
Culture Awareness and the Development of
Pluricultural Competence
The activities explore the following topics:
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The centre of attention here is
linguistic and cultural diversity in
a broader context and that of the
individuals.
They highlight the values of
language and culture in the
development of each individual,
groups and societies.
They raise awareness of the new
aims of language education and
aim for the development of a
plurilingual and pluricultural
competence.
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The definition of culture. ‘Culture as an
object’, ‘Culture as an enclosure’ and
‘Culture as the pluricultural identity of
individuals’.
The ‘transmission’ of culture. Can
culture be transmitted?
Identity and stereotypes. Who are
individual people? What are their personal
and social features?
Examination of identity. Going through
the multiple identifications which make up
an individual’s identity.
Developing pluricultural competence.
Developing both the ‘General
competences’ and ‘Communicative
language competences’ of language
learners. Awareness of culture and ‘rich
socialization’ through contact with diversity
as means of helping learners to become
pluricultural through language learning.
Awareness of Portuguese
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The activities develop
awareness-raising and the need
for introducing a new model of
language education, promoting
plurilingualism and
pluriculturalism.
They focus on observing,
analysing and exploring linguistic
and cultural diversity in language
education. Exemplify the ways of
how the motivation to learn
languages can be increased and
linguistic and cultural
competence developed.
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Activities: Building awareness of an
unknown language
An attempt to understand a poem in
Potuguese (particular words, particular
sentences etc.).
Trying one’s best to understand the
general idea of a poem using knowledge of
other languages (e.g.Latin). Identifying
verbs and their endings; forming one’s own
sentences in Portuguese on the basis of
the text and using the grammatical
information included in the Annexes.
Reflecting on what could have been learnt
about Portuguese based on these activities
and to what extent one’s experience in
teaching linguistic and cultural diversity
has been broadened .
Old and New Models of Language
Education
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The activities focus on raising
language educators’ awareness
and the need to give
plurilingualism and
pluriculturalism due
consideration.
There is argument for a new
model of language education.
This is to make language
educators, hovewer different their
contexts are, learn to stand up
for the new language education
policy.
In particular the activities deal
with:
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Pairing a number of opposite
statements to illustrate old and new
models of language education.
Discussing the advantages and
disadvantages that both models may
have in one’s own country.
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Discussing to what extent the
following educational paradigms
should be included in the curricula:
Bilingual education, Plurilingual
education, Pluricultural education,
Intercultural education, Anti-racist
education, Anti-sexist education.
Samples of the Ja-Ling project
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Janua Linguarum – The gateway to languages
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Project of the ECML (2000-2003) and
Socrates Comenius (2001-2004)
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The activities presented are a short selection
extracted from materials for the classroom
prepared by the partners in the different
participating countries. The materials were
composed from a booklet of activities for the
pupils and guidelines for the teachers. All
materials were built around a topic of interest
and designed so that the experiences and
knowledge of the children about languages
can be used and be seen to be of value. The
approach is based on asking children to
gradually ‘solve’ problems related to
languages through oral and written activities
consisting of observing, analyzing and
comparing words and sentences in different
languages, encouraging reflection and
cooperation among children.
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Extract 1: UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW, Polish
Project Group from University College of English
Language Teacher Education. From ANIMALS
SPEAK: Topic: Onomatopoeia for animal
noises, adapted from ‘Les animaux prennent la
parole’, Evlang, Paris V France, 2002, Level:
Class 2nd or 3rd.
Extract 2: UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA,
Faculty of Education, Slovene Project Group.
From CARNIVAL CELEBRATIONS.
Topic:Raising awareness of the use of the
article in English & in German, 2001-2004,
Level: Class 4th or 5th.
Extract 3:: UNIVERSITY OF AVEIRO,
Department of Didactics and Educational
Technology. Portuguese Project Group. From THE
HARE AND THE TORTOISE, Coordinators: Ana
Isabel Andrade, Filomena Martins and Isabel
Bartolomeu, 2004, Level: Primary school.
Extract 4 : UNIVERSITÉ DU MAINE ET
INSTITUT DE FORMATION DES MAÎTRES
D’ORLÉANS-TOURS, French Project Group.
From: présentations autour du monde
(enregistrement vidéo), coordinator: Michel
Candelier, age group: 5-7
“…A polyglot Europe is not a Europe of people who
are able to speak a lot of languages perfectly; but in
the best case one of people who can communicate
while everybody speaks their own language and
understands the other without being fluent. Also
while understanding it, even when with effort, its
spirit – the cultural universe that is expressed when
someone speaks the language of their ancestors and
their tradition – should be understood as well.”
Umberto Eco