To live with two languages – Leven met twee talen – Vivir con dos idiomas Erasmus Project

Project Title

To live with two languages – Leven met twee talen – Vivir con dos idiomas

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: Creativity and culture; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The secundary schools of La Garriga (Spain) and Drachten (The Netherlands) are both situated in parts of their countries, where many families are bilingual (Casteillian and Catalan in La Garriga; Dutch and Frisian in Drachten). The bilingual people here are used to constantly change their language, even within a conversation with two or three other people. They easily adapt to the situation. The schools want to do some research on this phenomenon. The idea is that the pupils learn to prepare and carry out a number of research activities: write a main question for the research, develop methods for investigations, find ways to measure results by designing research forms and by preparing interviews, valuate the results, come to a conclusion and answer to the main question and present the results to various groups interested in them: pupils of the own and the other’s school, staff and members of schools for higher education and a broader group of interested people through local newspapers and through European canals like e-Twinning platforms. The main question could be ( will be formulated by the pupils in detail): In what way can people benefit from the fact that they are bilingual in their own country when having to conversate in a third language?
The pupils will carry out the actual investigations when visiting the people of the partnerschool. There they will be hosted in host families and during their stay abroad they will do a large number of activities, so that they can get input to answer the central question of their research. These activities include normal lessons in the partnerschool, sports activities, excursions with a number of subjects about (not limitive) culture, religion, history, social life, art, music, traditions, problems the area has to deal with, agriculture, differences in landscapes, tourism, holiday opportunities.
International exchanges with a stay in a host family are without any doubt a life changing experience, which will help the pupils to adapt to new situations.
Thus, there will be a rather long time in the own school, during which the research is prepared and shared with the partnerschool, culminating in the exchange week and then a shorter period of time in which the answer to the central question is given and disseminated. The objectives can be described as follows: learning all aspects of a research project and carrying it out and to be well prepared for a weeks stay in a host family abroad.

In both schools the pupils in grade 3 (Drachten) and grade 9 (La Garriga) are participating in the projects. Their number varies from 25 to 35 each year. The idea is that as many teachers and other staff members contribute to this project by assisting the pupils with the research activities, the preparations for the trip abroad and for receiving foreign pupils, inform and instruct the parents for hosting one or more guests. Next to them, the schools will get in touch with institutions of higher education in the neighbourhood of the school to assist the pupils and school own teachers. They can help the pupils by providing an overall approach to research activities and teaching them methods to get an answer to the central question.
where possible the project will be integrated in the curriculum for grade 3 (9).

When the pupils find a positive correlation between bilinguism and the ability to easily adapt to a third language the result may be used to improve the foreign language teaching in both schools. Should there be a negative correlation the results might be a starting point for a different approach to foreign language learning. In both cases the help of experts in school for higher educations is decisive.
This means that the potential longer term benefits can be described as an improved of foreign language teaching in areas where the mayority of the people is bilingual. Such areas not only exist in The Netherlands and Spain, but in many parts of Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65625 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gomarus College Drachten 02UV-03 & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Sant Lluís Gonçaga