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Presentation at the Symposium of the ECSP for Multilingualism (Darmstadt, Germany)

This symposium was organised by the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism (ECSPM), on occasion of the European Day of Languages. It was co-organised and hosted by the Division of Multilingualism, Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.

"On the first day of the Symposium, 26 September, which was dedicated to the European Day of Languages, speakers talked on various issues and projects on multilingualism across Europe. The second day, 27 September, was devoted to presentations dealing with ideas on how we can best contribute to the efforts for change not only in the way languages are taught and learnt in formal educational settings by resorting to a new language didactics paradigm, but also in the way that future and practicing language teachers are prepared at universities and other professional development centres". [from: ecspm.org/ecspm-events/...]

 

'Trilingual education and more, as part of the educational innovation in Friesland' 

Mercator's Research Fellow Jelske Dijkstra was invited to the symposium to present the ’More opportunities with multilingualism’ project,  a project which has been developed and implemented in Frisian primary schools and what the initial results of the implementation are.

In the past, Frisian primary school pupils often faced either a bi- or a trilingual reality with Frisian, Dutch and English. Nowadays, however, an increasing number of migrant languages are present in the classroom. Primary schools are searching for new methods and techniques to deal with and make use of this multilingualism. Teachers do not want to ignore migrant languages, but find it difficult to sufficiently appreciate and use them. In addition, teachers want to combine languages in their teaching, as opposed to teaching each language separately. Jelske Dijkstra showed that academic research suggests that such an approach may well have better results.