A CONTINENT OF LANGUAGES
Europe is a continent in which over 200 languages co-exist, 24 of which have the status of official languages of the European Union. Many of these languages have been used to colonize new worlds and have become famous worldwide. Some of them have even become 'linguae francae' of culture, arts and business.
We reckon that all this richness, along with is preservation and knowledge, constitute one of the best achievements of the European continent. As a matter of fact, each language is the reflection of a unique way of seeing the world, transmitting the reality and culture of a population. There are few ways to know one culture which are more appropriate than through their language. This is so because by analysing their language, we can trace back the influences they have received throughout its history, along with the characteristics of the environment in which they live. We could mention beautiful anecdotes, like for example the Zulu expression 'ubuntu', whose meaning could be translated as 'I am because we are', and which automatically brings to our mind a tribal lifestyle, based on cooperation and complete clan solidarity. Without having to travel that far, we could compare English with any Germanic language and surprise ourselves by the enormous amount of French and Latin loans, all of them having their origin in the Norman Conquest and Invasion. Without even getting out of Spain, we can appreciate how the same Latin word 'domina' has evolved into the Castillian 'dueña', which has a completely different meaning to Catalan 'dona', voice which is completely the same as the Italian 'donna'.
Being teachers of an Adult Education Centre, we deem it our responsibility to spread such a richness among our students, and being properly trained for that. That is why we would like to start a project of deepening and spreading of European languages, especially English, German and Italian.
In the multicultural language of the 21st century, it is necessary for teachers to be trained and for them to have an adequate linguistic training. Our project intends to improve the linguistic competence of the teachers in our centre, with three clearly different motivations:
-On the one hand, the teachers in charge of teaching languages must recycle themselves with a certain frequency and receive training for the language they teach, so as to keep up a good level (pronunciation-wise, as well as grammatically and vocabulary-wise). Besides, in the case of an adult education centre, we have to attend the specific needs of our students, and act accordingly. For example, we have received a demand for advanced courses (B1-B2) of English over the past years, since the youngest students need certification of this levels in order to enter the job market (public competitions, supply lists, or even to travel abroad and find a good job in a different country).
Traditionally, we had centered our offer in the lowest levels of English, aimed especially at sutdents with an average age of fifty years old or more. Without leaving them aside, it is our wish to satisfy the training demands of students who may have more advanced language interests, and needless, to say, if we want to do that, we have to be well-prepared.
-On the other hand, the teachers in charge of non-language subjects have to be ready to participate in a KA-204 project, and be able to manage themselves in English or in any of the languages spoken in the countries participating in the project.
-Lastly, we would love to be able to organise little worksops of German and Italian so that our students could get familiarised (though shortly) with the language of the countries they are going to visit through the KA-204 project (Italy and Austria).