Preserving and promoting Europe’s cultural and linguistic heritage through empowerment of bilingual children and families Erasmus Project

Project Title

Preserving and promoting Europe’s cultural and linguistic heritage through empowerment of bilingual children and families

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

On 1 January 2017, 16.9 million people lived in one of the EU Member States with the citizenship of another EU Member State. 20.4 million people had been born in a different EU Member State from the one where they were resident. A move to a different country can result in loss of cultural identity, and in the case of minor EU languages or remoter areas the situation is even more challenging due to lack of contact with other co-nationals. The majority language can easily absorb non-community languages and cultures.

Most school systems only offer courses for the main EU foreign languages, but the overwhelming majority of the 24 official EU languages are least spoken languages and they are not officially included in the school curricula. Private lessons are expensive, and the language choice limited. Family language learning remains the most natural and only option. However, families that decide to raise their kid bilingual/multilingual often encounter challenges and do not know where to find help. Our analysis reveals that there is lack of appropriate methodology for teaching languages at home. Consequently, children do not always acquire appropriate proficiency, often just a speaking, without a proper literacy knowledge, if any at all.

It is also crucial to raise awareness about the benefits of bilingual upbringing. The emphasis pre-school teachers put on the community language can lead to the child’s home language being devalued. Teachers are often unaware of the potential advantages of learning more than one language as a child. Instead, they focus on perceived problems of bilingualism and subsequently incorrectly advise parents to drop a family language.

Therefore, the GENERAL OBJECTIVE of PEaCH is to create step-by-step guidance for parents and educators on how to support, maintain and develop a child’s home language(s) after a family move to a different language environment within the EU. PEaCH also wants to raise educator’s awareness of the benefits of bilingualism and home languages.

PEaCH aims to achieve this through the following SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:
• Strengthen the language learning of the 24 EU languages among children living in bilingual families in a country or geographical area where these languages are not spoken;
• Develop a methodology for the acquisition of languages through user-friendly bilingual upbringing for children between 0 and 12;
• Raise awareness about the benefits of bilingual upbringing among the teachers in kindergartens and elementary schools as well as nursery staff;
• Teach parents how to effectively teach their children their language of origin while living in another EU country;
• Create a European Network of PEaCH Ambassadors, teachers and educators promoting bilingual upbringing.

Therefore, PEaCH will reach two types of main TARGET USERS:
a) Parents in multilingual families across the EU
b) Educators in nurseries, kindergartens and primary schools across the EU

The project will produce four INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS, O1 Handbook for Parents on bilingual upbringing which will focus on providing concrete step-by-step strategies that parents could implement and customize, from the child’s birth (and even from pregnancy) up to adolescence. O2 Set of Educational Videos that will complement and visualise the strategies explained in the handbook. Both O2 and O3 Online Multilingual Collection of Materials for Children will be available in all 24 EU official languages. O3 represents language-specific materials used to enhance language skill development of children. On the other hand, O4 Toolkit for PEaCH Ambassadors and Educators will guide with information on advantages, facts and myths about bilingualism, language development of bilingual children, how to create a positive multilingual environment in the classroom and how to support parents in passing on the home language(s) to their children.
These outputs will be prepared thanks to PEaCH’s European network of teachers in kindergartens and primary schools covering all 24 official EU languages, which will share best practices, strategies and activities related to (early) childhood language acquisition.

Main impact of PEaCH project:
→ creation of universal method of upbringing of bilingual children explained in educational videos in all 24 EU official languages;
→ developing online database of materials for all 24 EU official languages as support resources for parents, teachers and educators;
→ training for teachers and educators through series of webinars regarding bilingualism, support to families, etc.;
→ creation of a European Network of PEaCH Ambassadors – Teachers and Educators interested in bilingual upbringing.

Project Website

https://bilingualfamily.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 183926,33 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITEIT GENT & Country: BE

Project Partners

• TALKIN’LTD
• Inspectoratul scolar judetean Iasi
• PMF SRL
• Multilingual Parenting Ab