Let’s learn each others languages by our history! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Let’s learn each others languages by our history!

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

This project brings together two groups of 20 Dutch and 20 French students, aged 14 to 16, in the third grade of secondary school. Together they will get to know each other and each other’s local history. They will do this by eTwinning throughout the school year and by participating in a physical exchange in January and May/June 2021.

Our first goal is to offer the students the experience of being able to deepen their contacts by speaking someone else’s mother language. In other words: by learning someone else’s language, you will be better able to get to know them. This way, the Dutch and French students will experience the value and joy of learning each other’s languages. As a consequence, we expect to increase their motivation in learning foreign languages other than English. We will achieve this by starting communication between them at CEFR level A1/A2 on an eTwinning platform. During the visit to The Netherlands, the used language will be Dutch, so that the French pupils can fully experience the language immersion. During the visit to France, it will be the other way around. Throughout the school year and during the physical exchange moments, the students will get to know each other better and better. Their stay at the host family will be the climax of the language acquisition and of getting to know one another’s cultures. The target language will always be the means of reaching this, and therefore must become more valuable to the students.

Secondly, we will let the students discover their similarities and differences. By doing their eTwinning assignments and the assignments during the physical exchanges, they will find out that the cultures of (northern) France and the Netherlands have parallels, but also differ at some points. We will also dive into our war histories: in what ways do we remember the World Wars in our countries? It would be especially interesting to take a look at the Great War, in which the French took part, but in which the Dutch stayed neutral. To answer these types of questions, the students will work on specific assignments during their History classes at school. These assignments will have a strong link with the excursions we will be making during the physical exchanges so that the history really comes to life. At the end of the school year, the students will have discovered that culture and history sometimes end at the country borders, but that they also often get past them. This will have an impact on their process of becoming a real EU citizen.

The eTwinning assignments related to the History lessons will be carried out in the pupils’ mother language, so that these will be a receptive language exercise for the students of the other country. Furthermore, the assignments during the physical exchange will also be in the mother language of the hosting country. This makes this project fully interdisciplinary: learning the target language will be done simultaneously with acquiring a knowledge of war history. This way, we will take a very much needed step in the development of our education. In the 21st century, society requires a new way of teaching children. This is not only true for the previously mentioned different methods of motivating children to learn, but also for teaching more efficiently by working in an interdisciplinary way. By connecting History lessons with language learning, we will thus contribute to the development of our education. In addition, we can fulfil an exemplary role in the education sector. By sharing our experiences with our direct colleagues, but also in our networks (ORION and LOF in The Netherlands and APNES in France) and in the press, we will actively show the possibilities to change education in secondary schools. This is how we hope to inspire colleagues from our own and other school subjects in the whole field of education to adapt their teaching methods to the demands of our time.

Of course we will stay alert to the results of our project. The effects of our activities will be evaluated by rating the work of the students. Their assignments will get an evaluation for the subjects French/Dutch and History. The evaluations of the language assignments will be done at CEFR-level A1/A2. The History assignments will be evaluated by the usual learning goals and asked skills of this school subject (such as ‘source analysis’). By doing this, we will secure the progress of our students. Furthermore, we want to investigate if the language level of the participating students will be higher than the language level of students that didn’t participate. Additionally, we are going to monitor whether their motivation to learn French or Dutch will increase. This can be proven, for example, when a larger percentage of the student body chooses French (NL) or Dutch (FR) in the fourth grade or at Lycée. These will be important evaluating points in our evaluation of the impact of the project in July 2021.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 25152 Eur

Project Coordinator

Cambium College & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Ensemble Scolaire Sacré-Cœur