Language Rich Europe
Multilingualism for stable and prosperous societies
What is Language Rich Europe about?
The British Council has longstanding experience in supporting the teaching and learning of English and the development of language education policies across the world.
From our perspective as a cultural relations organisation we believe that competence in and use of several languages is an essential tool to ensure better understanding and cohesion between and within societies. It is also well known that higher levels of multilingualism improve a worker’s employability and job mobility while opening doors to new business markets.
Language Rich Europe will therefore create an informed dialogue with leaders in government, educational institutions, public services, business and the media across Europe, highlighting the importance of multilingualism in achieving more prosperous and stable societies. It aims to encourage and enable these leaders to take a more strategic approach and increase investment in language education and use of languages across society.
How will it work?
Language Rich Europe is co-funded by the European Commission and we are working with a wide network of partners and specialists across 20 European countries, including EUNIC, the European Union’s Network of National Institutes of Culture.
We will carry out professional research that will be presented in an innovative and interactive measurement tool called the Language Rich Europe Index – A European Index on Multilingual Policies and Practices. This Index will help to visualise the role of and support for multilingualism in the participating European countries and highlight good practice.
It will measure how these countries perform against European standards in the following areas:
•Education (pre-primary, primary, secondary, adult)
•Public services and public spaces
•Business
•Media
•National language diversity documents/databases
Languages covered by the index will include:
•national languages
•foreign languages
•regional and minority languages
•immigrant languages
How will we use the results?
The results will be available in over 20 languages and published in print form and on an interactive website.
We will invite professionals from various sectors in each country to discuss the results, share good practice and develop action points for their area of work.
Language Rich Europe will also provide guidelines for language teaching and learning, which will be distributed to the 8,000 EUNIC teachers and their 2,000,000 students around the world. Finally we will create an online forum via our Language Rich blog. We invite you to join in the discussion and voice your views on the role of languages or share your personal experience.
Who is involved?
Participating countries include Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom. Check our partners page for a complete list of partners involved per country.
I would love to be a part of this project, participate in studies and conferences. I’m a language teacher and I support multilingualism, I was therefore very happy to learn about this. HOW can I be a part and participate?
I just saw your publication ” De mi cerebro, su neurona” Language learning in Peru which deals with the complex endeavour which is to become competent in both Spanish and Quechua,.
I currently work as specialist in English at the Ministry of Education in Peru and I am thrilled with the idea that the European Commission has funded “Language Rich Europe” and that the South American region can participate as well,.
Although there is no British Council office in Peru, TEFL in Peru continues being very active thanks to our good contacts in London and the IATEFL Peru Association.
I am Peruvian-British with a long link to British Council . Thanks for your help and I would love to participate in this project.
All the best and congratulations!!
Carmen
Hi Isabel
Thank you for your interest!
If you go to the “Contact” tab above, you will find the contact name for the British Council colleague working on the project in each country. You can either email them directly or email info@language-rich.eu for more information.
I hope this helps
Hello, I want to ask you whether Ireland is involved in this project, as it doesn’t show up in the list. Please let me know if I can contact someone in Ireland, I am very interested in this project (I speak 4 foreign languages) and would like to contribute as much as I can.
Hi Ioana, thank you for your interest in Language Rich Europe!
Although Ireland isn’t directly involved in the project, there will be some activities coming up that are open to everyone. Keep a look out on the blog and follow us on twitter (@languagerich) for up-to-date information
Eilidh
Project Co-ordinator Language Rich Europe
Cool initiative. I’ve bookmarked the site, and I’m interested in reading the report. It would be interesting to see this project on a global scale (i.e., comparing all countries), but that’s beyond the scope of the
project.
Chris,
Ontario, Canada
Thanks Chris, we’re looking forward to the results of the research too! Hopefully in the future we will be able to involve more countries outside of Europe but this is just the beginning and we had to start somewhere. Keep reading the blog though, we will try to deal with more languages here and we will always be interested in your comments (I mentioned Quebec, for example, in a previous post The Power of Languages)
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Hi, I am a researcher in (microcomparative) linguistics and I teach at the University. I would like to know more about the concrete work done within this project. I can attend the conference in Amsterdam (29.03.12, “The future of Languages”) and I will be also in Freiburg on April 18th-20th for another conference on the same dates. I would like to understand what the project activities are and perhaps getting myself involved: can you address me to someone specific that I could talk to during these events?
Thanks you
Kind regards
Irene
(I meant “thank you”:) )
Dear Irene,
Thanks a lot for your comment and your interest in the project. We have different Project Managers in each country: You can find their names in the “Contact” section of this blog. If there’s no personal email address on that page, you can always write to our general email address for any questions: info@language-rich.eu and we’ll get back to you or forward your email to a specific person. Hope this was helpful. If there’s anything else, please reply to this or write to our info email address.
Best wishes and hope to see you in many of our events!
Kirsi
Communications Coordinator
Why does this site appear only in English? Submit it in several languages and prove that you’re serious about multilingualism!
Our brand new multilingual website is coming soon… watch this space!