September 2005 - Association Comenius

LAURSEN Jett e
j l a @ c v u s o n d e r j y l l a n d . d k
Lecturer of English
Haderslev Te a c h e r’s College, Denmark
Language across bord e r s
A b s t ra c t
Comenius Week
CVU Sønderjylland, February 27 to March 4, 2005
Students and teachers walking down the
corridor outside the kitchen of home
economics at Haderslev Te a c h e r s ’ College on
a winter’s day in the beginning of March
heard a lot of noise and became quite hungry
from the smells of food coming from the
kitchen. If they had looked in they would have
seen about 14 young people speaking in
d i fferent tongues – but mostly in English –
some dancing and rehearsing to loud music,
others peeling potatoes or cooking vegetables,
and still others discussing what clothes to
wear for the fancy dress party at the college
later that night. What they would have seen
was our international guests from Belgium,
G e r m a n y, Spain and Holland cooking and
preparing a nice farewell party for their
Danish hosts on the last day of the
international week in Haderslev, Denmark.
CVU Sønderjylland (Centre for Higher
Education in Southern Jutland) in Haderslev
has been a “sleeping” partner in the Comenius
Network for a couple of years; however, after
a process of reorganisation we have woken up
again! As one of the first steps towards more
internationalisation in our college we planned
an international Comenius week in the Spring
of 2005 with a programme connected to the
topic: language across borders.
Our institution is situated in the southern part
of Denmark, very close to the German border.
There are minority groups on both sides of the
b o r d e r, and therefore the language situation
across the border puts focus on the connection
between language and identity.
In our study week 2005 we wanted to look at
languages and language learning as an
essential element in building our students’a n d
school children’s intercultural competence.
The programme started on Sunday February
27th with a get-together dinner at the college
and an introduction to the week and our
programme. We had some difficulties finding
enough hosts, because none of our own
students were planning to go abroad this year;
h o w e v e r, we wanted to start our short
exchanges anyway and thanks to our
international assistant in the college office, we
managed to find a place for all our visiting
students.
Monday was dedicated to learning some
Danish, hearing about bilingualism in
Denmark and the history of our region from
some of our colleagues at the CVU. T h e
Danish lessons were a success – Danish
students taught our guests a few important
words and phrases to “survive” and be able to
get into contact with the Danes in Haderslev.
Late afternoon there was a tour of the old
renaissance town of Haderslev, and our
visitors were delighted about the white snow
falling (and also happy that we had warned
them that it could be very cold in Denmark in
February!! – they had all brought winter boots
and heavy coats…).
Thus having been introduced to the region, the
language and the town it was time for the
international group to start working on
“language learning”, esp. early language
learning. On Tuesday we were so lucky to
have a lecture on Early Language Learning by
Professor Maria Felberbauer from our partner
college in Vienna, “Pädagogische A k a d e m i e
der Erzdiözese Wien”. We had invited her to
come during the international week on a
teacher exchange programme. In groups the
European students visited schools in
Haderslev to see how English was taught to
young children in Denmark. It was a shock to
some students to experience how much
freedom of movement and choice the Danish
children had in the classroom – for better and
for worse?! On the same day one of our
lecturers at the college made use of the
nursery rhymes, chants, children’s songs
brought from the students’home countries in a
session dedicated to working on the learning
potential of songs and rhymes. There were
performances and new songs learned across
cultures and languages.
Both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon there
were workshops to attend – either in music,
dance or crafts. These were very popular, and
at the end of the week we all saw the result of
the dance workshop – our international
students made a wonderful jazz dance
performance in the students’café!
Wednesday morning saw more school visits –
to an international class of 16-year-olds who
told our exchange students about Denmark in
English or German. By now we think our
guests had got a fairly good impression of
what it is like to go to school in Denmark.
Later that day Maria Felberbauer introduced
the European Language Portfolio to everyone
interested, and it is a project that could be
relevant for more Comenius programmes!
One of the most popular events for our
visiting students was probably the evening in
the students’bar at the college. It opened
especially for our visitors to be entertained,
and there was live music, played by student
bands, and a great atmosphere in the basement
club, while the world outside was becoming
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