Multilingualism for a sustainable society
Why the University of Lund is one of the partners in this project?
The Centre for languages and literature at Lund University is one of the partners in this project and the thesis by Céline Rocher Hahlin, who will be member of the project team, “Motivation pour apprendre une langue étrangère – une question de visualisation ? Les effets de trois activités en cours de français sur la motivation d’élèves suédois.” serves as supporting research for the project. “The results confirm that pupils’ Ideal L3 Self is stimulated when, on the one hand, activities reinforce positive images of the pupils’ view of themselves as future users of French and, on the other hand, when an on-line activity makes the students experience the target cultural context almost as in real life.” This extract from Rocher Hahlin’s thesis abstract clearly demonstrates the connection between increased motivation and the choice of method and activity. The project intends to identify and create a bank of methods and activities to support this idea.
To connect universities and teacher-training with upper secondary schools in the same project to develop teaching/learning methods is s a more in-depth approach, complementary to what our schools have experienced within international projects before and therefore we believe this project will create new networks, new projects, collaborations and future research.
How did you choose the project partners and what will they bring to the project?
Partner schools have been approached on the platform of eTwinning with a project outline. The choice of partners was depending on L3-languages taught at the partner schools. There have to be French, German and Spanish at Common European Framework of Reference for Languages levels A2-B2 at upper secondary school level. Students have to be aged 15-18. The partner-schools must have contacts with a university and/or a teacher-training-school for lectures, workshops, evaluation, dissemination of results and future network with research. The partner organisation at higher education level, Lund University, was approached through the existing cooperation with Gymnasieskolan Spyken in teacher education.
One of the partners has never previously been involved in a similar project (Germany). None of the partners have been in a mixed project including partners from both higher education and upper secondary education, but we all have experience from international school partnerships.