European minority languages Erasmus Project

Project Title

European minority languages

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

It can be difficult to motivate the students to study a minority language, especially now that English is considered to be the global language which can be used everywhere. Our situations in Finland and Slovenia are quite similar: the minority language is obligatory, the students are not very motivated and their level of knowledge varies a lot. Both schools are general secondary schools.

The Finnish partner school is situated in a small town in the coastal area where a lot of the Swedish speaking population lives. Most of them will need Swedish later at work , a fact many of them refuse to accept. The language climate in Finland has worsened during the past ten years and there is a constant discussion about the need for the Finnish speakers to study Swedish. This wide discussion makes it even harder to motivate teenagers to see bilingualism as an asset in our society and study the minority language.

The Slovenian school is a secondary school with Italian language of instruction situated in Portorož, in the cost region of Slovenia. This is a bilingual region and the Italian minority constitutionally recognized. There are schools of all grades with Italian language of instruction and the Italian language is a mandatory subject in all the Slovene schools of the region. Despite the possibilities knowing another European language offers, students aren’t motivated to study the minority language and the level of knowledge of Italian is decreasing by the years.

Our aim in this project is to raise the awareness of the importance of the development of language competences for fostering national identity and for the transmission of culture and tradition. We think that meeting another bilingual situation in another country will make the students think about their own situation and recognize the advantages of acquiring two languages and two cultures and that will motivate them to appreciate their minority language more and recognize the richness being bilingual offers. We want them to be aware of the diversity of languages that we have in Europe, both global languages, national languages and minority languages. With our project we want to raise language awareness both among our students and also among the teachers and the principals.

We want to empower our language teachers to improve their teaching methods by bringing them together with colleagues in a similar situation but probably with a different point of view and different solutions to any problems they face when teaching a minority language. It is common for the Swedish teachers in Finland and the Italian teachers in Slovenia to be in contact with their colleagues in their own country, but the discussion rarely crosses the national borders in the same way as for example English teachers are easily able to find colleagues and in-service training courses around Europe. It will be a good opportunity for teachers to exchange good practices and share ideas.

In the local activities we will offer all our students and members of staff an opportunity to take part. 10 students accompanied by the principal and two teachers will travel to the partner school during our one-week mobilities. Our activities include online activities where our students work together using eTwinning and other tools, surveys and visits. We will involve other schools in our areas visiting another language speakers’ school during the mobility and also a primary school where our students present the project and teach younger pupils what they have learned. All the activities and their results will be collected in one story created by our participating students, i.e. we will use storification as our learning and disseminating method.

The students will become aware of the bigger picture of both the national and minority languages in Europe during the activities that are done at home before the first mobility. They will study which languages are spoken around Europe and what the official languages of the European Union are. During the process they will understand the position of both their national and minority languages.

They will become more motivated in their language studies when working in international groups to come up with the advantages with knowing a minority language and comparing these in the two partner countries. Our minority language teachers will improve their teaching methods when they are able to work with their partner school colleagues comparing and explaining their own practices. Also observing students doing their activities will help our teachers to understand the students´ point of view and motivate them.

Our two partner schools bring four languages and cultures in the project, which means several aspects of intercultural communication and competence in our cooperation. All the project activities and social activities promote the students´ and teachers’ intercultural competence as they are done working together.

Project Website

https://erasmuseumila.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR1MsQQRW80ptoN2sI8AV6yfeJferNLN_FKiiHrSEGUt_3dYt83s3Lz4pDI

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 24258 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liedon lukio & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Ginnasio Antonio Sema Pirano