How to make reading an adventure? The Dresden team of the Czech school without borders and involved parents invited bilingual children to a reading night. 24 kids stayed together a whole night at the premises where they use to meet listenting to stories and poems of Czech authors.
The little readers could, too, embark on a journey through the ancient world, play dice with the little mole or bake a rather unusual cake with the dog and the cat, inspired by Josef Capek.
Inspired? Read more (in Czech only): www.csbh.cz/drazdany
An article from the New York Times, Sunday Review on the advantages of bilingualism. We always knew 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.”
Read the full article following the link above!
The heuropa! project was chosen to flash-showcase at the awards of the European Label for innovative projects in language teaching and learning (october 7th in Vienna).
The homepage of the (Austrian) National Agency For Lifelong Learning (Nationalagentur Lebenslanges Lernen) features a little slide show of heuropa (only in german)
Virtueller Rundgang 2: „Sprachen in der Region“ und „Mehr Sprachen sind mehrWert
Projektbeispiele:
HEUROPA PDF
A linguistics professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany, Prof. Janet Grijzenhout, recently gave a very interesting interview on the positive effects of multilingualism to the German newspaper “Südkurier”. In particular, she spoke about the bilingual education of children: what is best in this repect, which factors have a positive effect which factors could be a hindrance.
The interview is highly relevant for the heuropa! project as it supports many assumptions on plurilingual education which the project is based on.
If you can read German, please find the whole interview here:
“Mehrsprachigkeit hat positive Effekte” (pdf file)
(Source: suedkurier.de)
“From Migration to Integration” is the title of a recent conference held in Copenhagen, 1-2 October 2011, by the Nordic Union of Polish Education.
The conference especially discussed the integration of Polish pupils into northern European societies.
Beata Howe from the Association of Polish Teachers Abroad, one of Heuropa’s team members, brought into focus the migration of Poles to the United Kingdom and the their bilingualism:
Beata Howe: “Migration and bilingualism - Migracja a dwujęzyczność” (abstract)
This new article examines results of a recent study exploring Spanish-English bilingual children and the relationships among (a) their early brain measures of phonetic discrimination in both languages, (b) the degree of exposure to each language at home, and (c) the children’s later bilingual word production abilities. According to the findings, infants aged 6-9 month showed no neural discrimination of either language yet, but continuously improved this skill with increasing age. The results of the study suggest that the children’s later word production abilities are significantly related to the extent of this improvement and also to the degree to which these children are exposed to both languages in their homes.
To read the complete article go to:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447011000660
This article examines the outcomes of a German study about the foreign language proficiency of 9th grade migrant students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Turkish, Russian and Polish) in comparison to monolingual German students. The findings of the study are that the students of all three migration groups perform better in English than the German natives, especially the ones who grow up bilingually. This advantage of the migrant students is not a result of their parental support, as the study shows.
To read the complete article in German, go to:
http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/jg-16-2/beitrag/Goebel_Rauch_Vieluf.pdf
Questionnaires we spread among those involved mainly in the learning process of bilingual children: their parents and teachers at saturday schools – seeking to identify the special linguistic needs of bilingual children, their learning style and the difficulties they have to tackle with special regard to the development of a learning platform.
From parents we retrieved furthermore information about the speaking customs and language awareness in bilingual families, the motivation of the partner to join activities in Czech, Polish or Lithuanian and how parents try to involve their children in language learning.
Summary presenting the overall results of the survey among parents in graphs and charts. (Graphs refer to the total number of 113 respondents.)
Presentation of the answers retrieved (click opens pdf)
Prezentacja wyników ankiety dla rodziców: „Interaktywne materiały do nauki języka polskiego dla dzieci dwujęzycznych” (click opens pdf)
Vaikų bilingvizmo skatinimas: užsienyje gyvenančių lietuvių tėvų pateiktų atsakymų apžvalga (click opens pdf)
A recent study from Mike Vitevitch could proof, why bilingual speakers can easily switch from one language to another without struggling to find the right word. According to Vitevitch they do not have to “add a label to each word to identify it as being from one language or the other”, they just choose the language first and then look for the right word. There is apparently no need for extra-marking.
His conclusion: parents don’t have to be afraid that speaking and processing two languages in everyday life would harm the cognitive performance of their children.
(References: Vitevitch, M.S.: What do foreign neighbors say about the mental lexicon? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2011)
[[31 May 2011 - Survey is closed. Many thanks to all who participated.]]
Are you from Czech Republic, Lithuania or Poland? Do your children grow up outside your own passport culture?
Please join our survey! It will help us to best adapt materials to your and your children’s needs.
HEUROPA! is a European project preparing interactive learning materials of Lithuanian, Czech and Lithuanian language. The focus of HEUROPA! is on bilingual kids & teens and their families.
heuropa! team members at the kick-off meeting
