Talking About Language and EmotionS at Home Erasmus Project

Project Title

Talking About Language and EmotionS at Home

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

TALES@home (Talking About Language and EmotionS at home). This project aims to empower multilingual families in their language management at home. With reference to this management the focus is on language attitudes and emotions and this for two main reasons:- Multilingual families play a significant and important role in the language learning of the family members and this for all languages concerned (minority languages, heritage languages, languages of integration). Attitudes and emotions influence motivation and the learning of these languages.- Language use in the multilingual family influences the wellbeing of the family members. Multilingual families should be supported to create an optimal environment for language learning and wellbeing. They should create an open atmosphere in which decisions on language maintenance /shift are considered and debatable. They should reinforce the mutual understanding between different generations and a positive approach to language learning. They should be able to handle negative attitudes and reinforce the positive ones. This is a family matter for each multilingual family. Professionals (educators, social/medical workers, teachers etc.) working with multilingual families are confronted with family members who sometimes struggle with the multilingual context that they are living in or who express negative connotations towards the home language and/or language of integration. The negative attitudes influence their wellbeing and/or language learning. These professionals need tools to help clients to express the attitudes and bend them in a more positive direction and this supported by the family.

The central tool is an interactive application. The tool provides the possibility to the family members (from 6 years on) to input their emotions and ideas concerning the languages’ use at home. We provided different activities. Family members can create their language portraits and they can visualize their language competences on a ladder. They can measure their ‘temperature’ (cold/warm feelings) for different language situations at home such as dinner, discussions, visits etc. They can tell something about important (cultural) references in their lives and draw a timeline of their process of migration and language learning.

Professionals introduce the use of the tool in the family and support the communication about the outcome. To support the correct use of the app a user guide (in six languages) and short film are provided. In line with this, a training course for professionals is available in online talks about different subjects: they provide background information, an overview of the research done in this project and a presentation of the tool.

This project was taken up by 7 Partners. Soros International House (Vilnius, Lithuania), EURAC Bolzano (Bolzano, Italy), UNIPA (Palermo, Italy), Double Helix Resourses (London, England), Foyer vzw (Brussels, Belgium) provided the theoretical background and elaborated the constant involvement of the stakeholders from first questioning until finalizing the development of the tool. Howest, Department Devine-Digital Design & Development (Kortrijk, Brussels) was responsible for the design and development of the tool and lead the other partners through the methodology of User-Centered-Design. ENSA-network (Brussels, Belgium) sustained the dissemination.

To develop this app the chosen approach was “User Centred Design”; this means that the stakeholders (families and professionals) were strongly involved in the process of development.

During the process we could observe the impact of this approach on different levels. For the multilingual families: It was remarkable that often parents discovered aspects about themselves and/or the children they didn’t realize before. They understood quite fast the importance of working on positive approaches of mother tongues and languages of integration. It had an empowering effect: it was something they could do! So it was possible to see the impact immediately. In this stage (with the tool only recently available), we cannot be sure if it was long-term impact or short-term. A long time use can make this clear. For the professionals: They became more aware of the impact of language attitudes on learning and well being. They became more aware of the importance to take these issues up with their students of clients. For our organizations: It gave us the opportunity to exchange experiences in different language contexts.

All materials are freely accessible to the users on the project website www.talesathome.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 223941 Eur

Project Coordinator

FOYER VZW & Country: BE

Project Partners

• ENSA – EUROPEAN NETWORK OF SOCIAL AUTHORITIES
• SOROS INTERNATIONAL HOUSE
• HOGESCHOOL WEST-VLAANDEREN HOWEST
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PALERMO
• ACCADEMIA EUROPEA DI BOLZANO
• DOUBLE HELIX RESOURCES LTD