Modern Languages Blog

Read the January newsletter from Scottish CILT.

Included in this issue:

- Managing Modern Languages Conference, aimed at principlal teachers with responsiblity for modern languages but whose background is in another subject

- Communicate.07 Conference, the Scottish CILT and LTS joint conference on Languages Teaching and ICT

- The Scottish Languages Review

- The European Award for Languages 2007

- News from cultural institutes and schools

Many animals and plants threatened with extinction could be saved if scientists spent more time talking with the native people whose knowledge of local species is dying out as fast as their languages are being lost.

Read the full story on the Independent website.

Ministers are being urged to do more to encourage children to speak two languages from a young age. Edinburgh University and the Royal Society of Arts say research points to bilingual children being better at learning a wide range of subjects.

Read the full story on the BBC website.

I’m delighted to say that some of the most highly used language education resources in the French and German language have, from today, joined the Modern Foreign Languages Environment family of resources.

Hennings Haus and Chez Mimi are Flash-based, graphic and audio-filled interactive language learning resources, designed for primary/elementary through to early secondary/junior high level. Many of the scenarios and exercises work really well with small groups on interactive whiteboards or on individual laptops.

Now that the resources, co-produced with Channel 4, are part of the MFLE the scores of thousands of monthly users will be able to easily find other language learning resources on the Environment, providing a greater exposure for some of the great work Scottish teachers are doing.

Thanks to my colleague Annelie for getting things this far. It wasn’t easy! Our next steps, you’ll be pleased to know, are to examine whether or not versions of these resources in Spanish or any other language would be appreciated. Feel free to let us know your thoughts here on the blog.

Teachers in Cameroon are concerned that the new language frananglais – a mixture of French, English and Creole – is affecting the way students speak and write the country’s two official languages.

Read this story on the BBC website.

People who are seeking to come to the UK to work or to join a spouse already living here should be required to learn English, an expert body says.

Read the full story on the BBC website.

This Education Guardian article gives details of a pledge to help people on a lower income to pay for English lessons.

When Bobby and Gordon Hogg meet up for a chat, they enter a linguistic world that few, if any, can now understand. The brothers, both in their eighties, may be the last known speakers of a dialect peculiar to the Black Isle town of Cromarty. Robert Millar, a lecturer in linguistics at Aberdeen University and author of Northern and Insular Scots, has described the dialect as the most threatened in Scotland.

Read this article on the Scotsman website.

The BBC reports that Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company is for the first time putting on a play in Arabic at its main theatre in William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon.

In related news, the Scotsman reports that Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has become the first in Europe to offer an MBA in Arabic. Arab students will be able to sign up to study at a distance for the business courses in their own language.

Read these stories on the BBC and Scotsman websites.

Help your students tell the G8 what they think

Your students could win a place at the Junior 8 Summit 2007 in Germany, the official youth event of the G8.

The J8 website provides free educational resources to help you teach young people about the major issues facing the world. There are fact sheets, lesson plans and opinion pieces, and exercises and games on issues of global citizenship: from poverty reduction to infectious diseases to climate change.
 

You can also help your students to enter the J8 Competition 2007, a unique chance to develop their ideas about global issues and improve their teamwork skills. Competition entries must be received by 29^th March 2007.

The winning team will represent the UK at the Junior 8 Summit in Germany in late June, where they will meet and work with other young people from around the G8 and together come up with their own solutions to the G8 agenda. Last year the young people had a 45-minute audience with all eight world leaders.

Don’t miss this opportunity to involve your students in such an important event! Visit the J8 website to find out more or contact the J8 on uk@j8summit.com.

Microsoft has announced a joint venture with Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the Gaelic development agency in Scotland, University of Strathclyde and Learning and Teaching Scotland to develop support for Scots Gaelic in Windows Vista and Office 2007. This new development will allow Gaelic speakers to use Microsoft software in their own language.

The venture is funded with £45,000 from the Bòrd. Gaelic will become the 63rd language to be translated as part of Microsoft’s wider global local language programme, in which Microsoft partners with governments and local language specialists to develop user interfaces in many minority languages across the world.

Read the full article on the Hi-Tech Scotland website.