Launch of the new website within a few days…

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We are currently building the main website for this project due to launch in the evening of 23 May 2012. Its centrepiece will be the new tool to access the results of our research: The Language Rich Framework for language policies and practices.

The framework is an analysis of language policies and practises in 24 countries and regions in Europe, comparing them with international standards. This analysis will be the basis for the project as we work through our network of 1200 policy makers and practitioners to encourage more language-rich societies in Europe.

In other words this blog is just the first part of our ambitious project. Follow it and our Twitter feed to stay up on our progress and take part in the ongoing discussions.

Once the project officially launches in May, the blog will continue as an important part of the full website and our effort to advocate multilingualism for stable and prosperous societies.

Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding

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In case you have missed it, there’s an interesting new OECD publication which “examines the links between globalisation and the way we teach and learn languages”. You can preview the whole book online for free. Please see the abstract of the book below for more information.

The rise of globalisation makes language competencies more valuable, both at individual and societal levels. This book examines the links between globalisation and the way we teach and learn languages. It begins by asking why some individuals are more successful than others at learning non-native languages, and why some education systems, or countries, are more successful than others at teaching languages.

The book comprises chapters by different authors on the subject of language learning. There are chapters on the role of motivation; the way that languages, cultures and identities are interconnected; the insights that neuroscience provides; migrants, their education and opportunities to learn languages; language learning and teaching in North America; and new approaches to language learning.

SHOPLANG Project: the shopping language game

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In this blog post, we’re introducing an interesting project which attempts to teach languages in a very innovative way. The project SHOPLANG 2.0 is a continuation of the project “SHOPLANG – The Shopping Language Game”, and is supported under the “Lifelong Learning Programme” of the European Commission for the period 2010-2012. Please read more about the project below, in an article written by Roberto Righi from Amitié.

The idea of SHOPLANG 2.0 is to provoke and encourage the interest of the audience in 4 less taught European languages: Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Slovenian. The aim is to give basic knowledge of the target languages and thus to facilitate the everyday activities of the European citizens who have become more and more mobile. In the informal environment of the local shop people can be easily motivated to learn foreign languages and to recognize that as an advantage.

The project is realised in supermarket chains through promotional campaigns in the target languages. Two campaigns per language are organised in each partner country, involving the supermarket customers in entertaining language games and activities providing information in the target languages related to the theme of shopping. Those activities are supported by learning materials developed under the project.

An important expectation under SHOPLANG 2.0 is the potential for incorporating some of the developed materials and methods in the learning modules of existing language courses. Associated language providers will try out the developed materials with their language students and at a later stage use them as supporting materials in the course of study.

The language campaigns in supermarkets of Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and the Netherlands started in March 2012, and will be finalised in June, providing results and feedback, that will be described in a final Guideline document.

Many training materials have been carried out so far, mainly language word games that can lead language teachers to develop task-oriented activities that engage their students in creative language use. Games offer students a more motivating and relaxing learning atmosphere, leading the participants to learn more quickly and retain the learned materials better in a stress-free and comfortable environment.

The language materials are available to download in the project website http://shoplang2.com, in all the partners’ languages. A special section gives the opportunity to listen to the authentic pronunciation of the language information contained in the products, recorded by native speakers.

A web application resembling an online language supermarket helps to learn more about the target languages, and the e-shopping game enables people to interact in different categories and to test their skills and what already learnt in an entertaining way.

The Shoplang project is coordinated by KuTu (Bulgaria), and the partnership is composed by Amitié (Italy), FLEP (Portugal), Soros (Romania), Inter-Kulturo (Slovenia), English Unlimited (Poland), Pressure Line (Netherlands).

For more information please contact Roberto Righi, Amitié

Meartaligens is in pre op dyn CV

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Last week, Idske Bangma, research assistant at the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, gave a presentation about multilingualism in children’s everyday life at the ‘Dag van het jonge kid’ (Day of the young child). This presentation was partly based on the results of the EC-funded MELT project (Multilingual Early Language Transmission).

Below you can read the abridged version of Idske Bangma’s presentation, in Frisian, which appeared in the newspaper the Friesch Dagblad on April 23.

Meartaligens is in pre op dyn CV

Wy kinne net mear om meartaligens hinne. Ek it ûnderwiis kriget dat hieltyd better yn ‘e gaten.

De taal is te fine yn ferskillende farianten om ús hinne. De winkelstrjitten fan ‘e grutte stêden binne hieltyd Ingelsktaliger en ‘sale’ hat ‘uitverkoop’ hast hielendal ferdrongen. Kommersjeel is der foar it Frysk of in oare streektaal gjin romte, mar op oare terreinen binne der in protte foarbylden fan de lytse taal of it dialekt, foaral yn it deistige libben en de kultuer. Tink oan muzyk, teater, kabaret en oare kultuerútings yn it Frysk, Bildts, Grunnegs, of Stellingwarfs. Yn ‘e kranten komme streektalen, dialekten en minderheidstalen werom yn berte- en rou-advertinsjes en is it Ingelsk noch fier te sykjen. Taal is dan gjin kommersjeeel kommunikaasjemiddel, mar is relatearre oan gefoel, identiteit. Wat is it moai datst dy yn dyn memmetaal úterje kinst en by dyn eigen gefoel bliuwe meist. En datsto frij bist om dyn eigen taal rûnom te brûken.

For the full article, click here.

Why are you running a project that promotes multilingualism?

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Today’s blog post is written by Aneta Quraishy, our Language Rich Europe Project Manager, who is based in British Council Berlin. Please read on to find out about her experiences on working in a project which promotes multilingualism.

OK, I may have my personal reasons for getting involved like being multilingual myself and not being able to imagine living a different reality or not having a bookshelf of books written in Czech, English, Spanish and French and revelling in the fact that I can reach for any of these and understand them all without much difficulty nowadays.

However, professionally, as Senior Project Manager of Language Rich Europe I often get asked by contacts, friends and family why the British Council is promoting multilingualism and simply not just focussing on English teaching and exams. My direct answer would be that we are a cultural relations organisation and the encouragement of diversity in language learning, acquisition and support of multilingualism should be at the heart of any such endeavour. The British Council should be and is committed to building long term relationships and trust between people in the UK and other countries and this does not simply happen by imposing English onto them.

The overall objectives of Language Rich Europe are:

  • to facilitate the exchange of good practice in promoting intercultural dialogue and social inclusion through language teaching and learning;
  • to promote European cooperation in developing language policies and practices across several education sectors and broader society;
  • to raise awareness of the EU and Council of Europe recommendations for promoting language learning and linguistic diversity across Europe.

Ironically all this came even more to my mind when I read a recent Guardian article by Robert Phillipson (Linguistic imperialism alive and kicking, 16 March), which conveyed concerns of internationally driven efforts to strengthen the learning of English and claimed that,

“British policies in Africa and Asia have aimed at strengthening English rather than promoting multilingualism, which is the social reality. Underlying British ELT have been key tenets – monolingualism, the native speaker as the ideal teacher, the earlier the better etc – which the same book diagnoses as fundamentally false. They underpin linguistic imperialism.”

Although this may to an extent seem true outside Europe, I firmly believe that projects like Language Rich Europe can help to tackle such a mind-set and reality. English will naturally continue to be a dominating second language around the globe. We should not try and oppose this reality and surely a supply of well-trained English language teachers and professionals will do nobody any harm. However, English needs to be promoted alongside other national, foreign, regional/minority and immigrant languages.

Through LRE we aim to promote greater cooperation between policy makers and practitioners in Europe in developing good policies and practices for multilingualism. Such polices will ensure that languages and cultural exchange continue to be promoted and encouraged at school, university and in broader society. We believe that this is essential if Europeans of all ages are to develop a broader international outlook and if Europe as a whole is to position itself successfully to do business with the world’s emerging economic powers in the 21st century.

John Knagg, British Council Senior Adviser Learning and Teaching responded to Phillipson with a letter,

“Governments worldwide want better access to English for their citizens to improve education, work and social mobility prospects – and they come to us for advice and support. While part of our mission is to develop a wider knowledge of English in the world, we do this within a wider aim of promoting the advancement of education.

English should add to a child’s linguistic heritage, not replace it. This is afterall, how we see foreign languages being taught in British schools.

Most of the 10 million teachers of English around the world are bilingual or multilingual non-native English speakers. Multilingualism gives people great advantages in their lives and their jobs, and we promote it as a value. Phillipson quotes his experience from before 1992 – the reality is different.”

You can read the full letter Multilingualism works on this website.

Language mixing in youth language use – an exception or a rule?

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A couple of weeks ago I overheard an interesting conversation while sitting in the park. Afterwards, I started to wonder if what I heard was just a one off example of special kind of language use or nothing special these days, and that’s when I decided to discuss the matter here in the hope of getting some comments from our readers!

This is what happened: There were three girls speaking in English (well, that’s what I first thought). They didn’t have a strong accent and they could’ve well been foreign (i.e. not Belgian) as that park is often frequented by foreigners. After a while I realised that they were speaking in Dutch after all, with a Flemish accent. I listened further and thought I heard English again. Then I thought one of them must be English-speaking while the rest are Dutch-speaking. They kept talking and then I got it: They spoke mostly in Dutch but sometimes, out of the blue, they said something in English. When one said a sentence in English, the others usually answered in English, too, and at some point they switched back to Dutch. An extract of the conversation was something like this:

“Toen ik thuis zat, weet je wat ik plots zag?”

”No, tell me.”

”A huge spider, it was like this big!”

”Oh my god, what did you do?”

”I just looked at it and screamed!”

”Ik zou het niet aankunnen – zo groot!”

”Het was vreselijk, hoor.”

”I can totally believe it.”

I was so surprised to hear the girls speak like this that I wanted to investigate the subject a bit further. I know I mix languages myself, too but I thought it was just because we’re a multilingual family and are used to speaking in many languages. I came across an interesting research entitled National survey on the English language in Finland: Uses, meanings and attitudes, 2011, which found that this language mixing (or, code switching), and in particular, using English alongside with your mother tongue is quite a common feature also in Finland – especially among youth. What startled me is that according to the survey, most people (76.4%) don’t even realise they’re mixing languages! What’s more, this mixing also occurs in writing, which puzzles me even more, in the sense that when you write, you normally take more time to consider what you say whereas speech is more instantaneous and somehow that makes it more fitting for language mixing. Then again, come to think of it, I might stick in a sentence in English myself when writing an email in another language.

According to the article ”[mixing] takes place especially in everyday informal speech situations and in occupational language use” and “Mixing English and the mother tongue was more common in cities than elsewhere”. Both of these findings seem logical.

There’s also the question of mixing words or entire sentences; yet another thing is to use words that have derived from English but have become part of the national language, be it officially or unofficially, such as in this case (see point 36 “English alongside the mother tongue” please). In my experience, this seems to be quite a common kind of usage of English words in another language. I hear it often and use words like this myself; in fact, I don’t consider words like ‘organisoida’ or ‘kompromissi’ as English words anymore.

Still, I’m left to wonder: If this kind of mixing is common language use these days, how common is the kind of use I overheard in the park, in which entire English sentences where used in otherwise Dutch conversation? And, if people use another language in their speech/writing to this extent, can they still be regarded as monolinguals? Where do we draw the line – or, do we even have to draw a line?

Von Babyrobben, Löwen und Gazellen

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The article below (in German) is written by Julia Kofler, Language Rich Project Manager in Belgium. On 21 March, she went to hear Professor Louis-Jean Calvet speak on the subject of language policy today at a lunchtime conference organised by Alliance Française in the European Parliament.

Les politiques linguistiques aujourd’hui – Die Sprachenpolitik heute

Eine Mittagspause mit Louis-Jean Calvet im Europäischen Parlament, organisiert von der Alliance Française und der Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie

Das Foto, welches auf der Einladung zur Konferenz abgebildet ist, zeigt einen nachdenklichen, fast streng blickenden Herrn in blauem Hemd und grauen Haaren. Ob das einer gelungenen Mittagspause zuträglich ist? Professor Calvet ist, erfreulicherweise, gar nicht der doktrinierende Dozent des Vorlesesaals früherer Unistunden, nein, Professor Calvetss Vortrag war, nach einer zähen Einleitung der Organisatoren, überaus unterhaltsam und, sprachlich gesehen, äusserst bilderreich.

Autor des Buches « La guerre des langues », Louis-Jean Calvet, ehemaliger Professor der Soziolinguistik an der Pariser Sorbonne und nun Professor an der Universität der Provence, ist ein Vertreter und Verfechter der Mehrsprachigkeit und untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen – und jetzt auf französisch : le discours linguistique et le discours colonial sur les langues, puis les liens entre langue et pouvoir. Oder: das Verhältnis zwischen Sprache und Macht folgend dem Sprachendiskurs und dem Kolonialdiskurs über Sprachen.

Louis-Jean Calvet ist auch Autor des französischen Language Rich Europe Essays und weiters Erfinder des « Barometre Calvet des Langues du Monde », welches auf der Website www.portalingua.info getestet werden kann. Die französische Zeitung l’Express titelt hierzu : « Louis Jean Calvet a invente un barometre des langues », und erklärt:

Si l’on parle souvent de l’importance d’une langue en terme de nombre de locuteurs, Calvet démontre que ce n’est pas forcément le facteur le plus important. Si l’on enlève ce facteur, certaines langues bien placées, comme le mandarin qui est en tête si l’on ne prend en compte que ce facteur, voient leur position dégringoler dans le classement et d’autres facteurs, comme la pénétration d’Internet, peuvent permettre à des langues peu parlées comme le suédois, d’arriver en tête du classement. (http://www.lexpress.to/archives/6008/)

Die Website und der Barometer wurde von Professor Calvet zusammen mit seinem Bruder, von Beruf Mathematiker und Statistiker, entworfen. Ein Dream-team also, das Sprachenpolitik und-gebrauch effizient und benutzerfreundlich darzustellen vermögt. So wurden während des Vortrags Elemente wie “competition par exploitation” und “competition par interference” vorgestellt, wobei man sich Ersteres vorstellen muss wie – Achtung, jetzt kommt die erwähnte Bildersprache- eine Wasserstelle in der Afrikanischen Steppe. An dieser besagten Wasserstelle trinken gerne Gazellen, aber nur, wenn nicht gerade ein Löwe dasselbe zu tun gedenkt. Die Gazellen sind zwar vorsichtig, aber die Präsenz des Löwen vertreibt sie nicht vollkommen, nein, es ist vielmehr so, dass die Steppenbewohner nebeneinander lebend ein Equilibrium gefunden haben. Genauso verhält es sich mit dem “modèle gravitationnel”, wo dominierenden Sprachen – auch hyperzentrale Sprachen genannt ( z.B. Englisch und superzentrale (z.B. Französisch) und periphäre Sprachen (Korsisch) ko-existieren ohne sich negativ zu beeinflussen. Deswegen, so Professor Calvet, ist es von wenig Nutzen, superzentrale und periphäre Sprachen zu verteidigen “comme les bebes phoques (wie Babyrobben), es mache vielmehr Sinn, ein Gleichgewicht aller Sprachen anzustreben. Wie das gemacht werden kann und welche Faktoren dabei zählen, kann man selbst am Sprachbarometer testen.

Um nun auf die Frage der gelungenen Mittagspause zurückzukommen, ja, es waren zwei gut genutzte Stunden, der Geist wurde genährt, nur der Magen kam zu kurz.

Are bilinguals smarter than the rest?

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Lately there has been an increasing amount of articles written on the subject of bilingualism. Some argue that people brought up bilingual are smarter than the rest of us. Others tell tales of hardship caused by loss of identity, loss of belonging, loss of friends. According to a recent article written by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee for The New York Times, there is enough evidence to show that

Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

It’s all down to interference:

- – in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other.

This was previously considered a hindrance but in fact, it makes the mind work harder and thus strengthens its cognitive muscles. The bilingual brain actually improves the brain’s “executive function” which directs things like problem solving and planning. One of the processes this influences is remembering things.

According to the article, the main difference between bilinguals and monolinguals is that they have a “heightened ability to monitor their environment”:

Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.

This monitoring is certainly visible in our 2-year-old daughter’s everyday life. She constantly switches between her two languages, Finnish and Dutch, while talking to people. This is an extract of a conversation which took place recently:

Me: “Sanopa papalle, että kahvi on valmista. Nyt voi tulla syömään aamupalaa.”

She: “Papa, koffie klaar! Eten.”

Also, she switches between languages even within a sentence if, for example, she happens to hear her father come in:

She: “Kohta pyörällä… buiten fietsen.”

I often wonder how much she understands of the situation she’s in, that is, that she speaks two languages whereas many other people around her don’t. It does seem that she recognises the fact and says things like “papa zegt ‘baby’, äiti sanoo ‘vauva’”. She has also learned to know which relatives and friends speak which language.

When it comes to bilinguals having a good memory, I must say that our daughter seems to have an incredibly good one. When she sees a book she hasn’t seen in months, she instantly remembers what it’s about. Or, when she sees a car that resembles her Finnish grandparents’ car she’s seen only a few times in her lifetime, she always shouts “mummi pappa auto!” Also, she seems to remember everyone’s names – even if she’s only seen them in a photo – and she can connect things like berries with her Finnish grandparents.

I could be inclined to say that our daughter is a good example in proving the claims in Bhattacharjee’s article right. On the other hand, I haven’t done many comparisons, so it might as well be that this is completely normal behaviour of a two-year-old, or that this is just how she is and has nothing to do with her being bilingual. Somehow I do think though, that this constant increased brain activity makes bilinguals more active, more alert. Whether this is always a good thing, I don’t know. Our daughter seems to have her head full of things constantly and cannot sleep easily or talks in her sleep – in multiple languages. So maybe this constant language switching and monitoring your environment has such a profound effect that it can even cause restlessness. Then again, maybe it’s just how she is. Whatever the case, I think I wouldn’t go out of my way to make my child bi- or plurilingual, but if it’s possible and comes naturally (like in the case of parents with a different mother tongue), I think it’s certainly worth it.