Language-Today-Issue-35-May-2020

Recommendations

Info

NEWSWe bring you the stories that are important to your careerMORE SUCCESS FOR THELANGUAGE MAGICIANThe Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sportand Culture of the European Commission hasinformed THE LANGUAGE MAGICIAN (TLM) team that TLM has beenselected as a “success story” by a panel of experts at the European Commission.“Success stories” are finalised projects that have distinguished themselves bytheir impact, innovative results, creative approach and contribution to policymaking and designed to be a source of inspiration for others.ALL was a partner in the project launched at Language World 2018.Colleagues using the game with their pupils are reminded of the additionalresources available from the TLM website - Classroom resources were part of theoriginal project and new this year are Shared resources.https://www.thelanguagemagician.net/ALL / LFEE WORKSHOP FOR ALL MEMBERSTo complement our work with the ELAPSE project, ALL is working with LFEEEurope, to offer a training programme ‘Exploring and Developing CLIL’in France, Germany and Spain. This one week course, exclusively for ALLmembers, aims to:• Explore strategies for extending learners’ language skills throughInterdisciplinary activities• Develop new skills for language teaching and transferability acrosssubject areas• Explore the CLIL approach• Develop and consolidate participants’ knowledge of French / Spanish /German• Increase participants’ cultural awareness of France / Spain / Germany• Explore efficient and innovative use of ICT tools• Join in practical CLIL workshops• See CLIL in action during a possible school visit (depending on time of yearand availability of our partners.)Twenty-nine schools, both Primary and Secondary, across England, NorthernIreland and Wales are partners with ALL in this project. We have applied forfunding for this through ERASMUS+ and if successful, the course (includingtravel and subsistence) will be free to participating ALL members. For moreinformation contact ros@lfee.netWe will hear if the application has been successful in June and the coursedates are:• Saturday 24 - Saturday 31 October 2020, Montpellier, France.• Saturday 10 - Saturday 17 April 2021, Malaga, Spain and Berlin, Germany.• Saturday 17 - Saturday 24 July 2021, Montpellier, France and Malaga, Spain.NEWS FROM FIPLVFIPLV Nordic-Baltic Region conference, Future of Languages 2020, due to takeplace in Reykjavik this June, will now be held on 10-11 June 2021.FIPLV World Congress will take place 6-8 September 2021 in Warsaw, Poland.We will be sending out further information in due course, but it promises to bea wonderful congress to celebrate FIPLV’s 90th anniversary.GOT A STORY?Email us at:info@alllanguages.org.ukTHE POWERLANGUAGECHALLENGEHaving worked with teachers andlearners from all over Europe andbeyond over the past 10 years, thePowerLanguage team is committedto connected learning - connectingteaching and learning to youngpeople’s lives, experiences and passionsas well as the communities they live in.To this end, we have created thePowerLanguage Challenge, hopingto engage youngsters actively andencourage them to share their interestswith their peers around the world.We are asking learners to createshort podcasts in order to teach theirlanguage as well as share their cultureand passion, with other young people.The videos should be produced in 2languages: their mother tongue anda language of their choice. Thesevideos will then be published onpowerlanguage.school/challenge,where you can also see examples ofvideos already created.Watch this short animation to find outmore, or go to powerlanguage.school/challenge-submission to send us yourvideo!WELCOME TO THE NEWCONSEJEROWhen meetings commence again, we lookforward to making the acquaintance ofJosé Antonio Benedicto, the new EducationCounsellor for the Spanish Embassy whowill be in charge of the Consejería, andthe offices in Manchester, Edinburgh andDublin for the next five years.José Antonio ‘s career has given him arange of experiences, among which hehas served as the Education Attaché to theSpanish Embassy in New York, as well asSpanish Education Counsellor in Polandand China. We hope he enjoys his time withteachers of Spanish in the UK and Ireland!!LANGUAGE WORLD 2021:A RICH CURRICULUM FOR ALLis planned for 2021. We are exploringdates, venues and options.www.all-languages.org.uk Summer 2020 4
SUCCESS STORIESCelebrating successes in language teachingand learning from across the countryDO YOU HAVE ASTORY FOR THESEPAGES?Email: info@all-languages.org.ukCreative Translation:Workshops and PrizesTranslation is far more than a dry test of grammarand vocabulary. It is a trojan horse for creativityand language awareness, for collaborative learning,accessing authentic texts, and building confidence. Forthese reasons, it’s the focus of the Stephen Spender Trust(SST) 1 and the Queen’s College Translation Exchange(QTE) 2 . We use translation to enthuse young languagelearners, aiming to increase MFL uptake at schools and onto university.To translate a sentence well you need to be able to takeit apart, understand it and put it back together again.This decoding appeals to different kinds of minds andcan be used to teach and consolidate anything from aprecise understanding of a grammar point (which nounis that adjective agreeing with?) to a more general idea ofhow the language works and how it relates to English. Itis part of a creative process and is therefore intrinsicallymotivating. We don’t want to know about that adjectivefor the sake of it, but because it will help us to unlock thistext and thereby to transform it into a brand new idiom,to ‘make it our own’.This is the aspect of translation with the power to enthuseand inspire. I’ll never forget the SST workshop when a10-year-old boy dissolved in tears because he’d lost hisEnglish version of the Polish poem we’d been working on.He hadn’t known any Polish at the start of the day, but thegentle, staged process had enabled him to do somethinghe and his classmates had thought impossible, and theresult was extremely important to him. He wanted totake his translation home to his parents, to bring it toschool the following day to show his teacher, to keep it forhimself. (Reader, we searched and found it!)Creative translation workshops often begin with anexercise on idioms – the perfect way of helping studentsperceive the difference between a ‘literal’ and a ‘creative’translation. What could the French phrase that translatesas ‘I have other cats to whip’ possibly mean, and howdo we express it in English? The language work comesin decoding the original French, the creativity in itstransformation to ‘I have other fish to fry’. Once linguisticmuscles have been flexed in this way, we translate a texttogether – picture book, poem, short piece of prose orstory – with reference works to create a level playing field.Pupils might start by looking at the images in a picturebook (or a graphic novel) before the Spanish words areadded. One workshop uses the humorous Argentiniancomic Mafalda to teach GCSE grammar and vocabularyto Year 11 boys, who then deliver the same workshop tothe girls in their class. 3Poetry translation is the focus of our national competitionthe Stephen Spender Prize, 4 open to all ages and theperfect, task-based, remote activity for these times – withcash prizes! We use images here, too, by starting from acollection of related images to help pupils imagine theworld of the poem before they tackle the text. Althoughentrants can translate any poem in any language, thisyear for the first time we have published suggestedpoems in French, German, Spanish and a handful ofother languages, many by contemporary poets. Theseare available on our website, 5 to make the competitionaccessible to all, along with resources for teachers andshort films, 6 walking viewers through the process oftranslating a poem in real time.Ways to get involved:• Run the Stephen Spender Prize as a remote activityfor your pupils - deadline 17 July – and enter yourself,with the chance of winning £1000! 7• Recommend our Polish Spotlight Prize to the EALcoordinator in your school 8• If you’re a primary/secondary MFL teacher inBuckinghamshire or Oxfordshire, join in our‘Creative Translation in the Classroom’ project 5• Primary and secondary teachers in London –contact us to take part in a multilingual literaturefestival next year 10• We’re keen to involve more PGCE students inprojects – get in touch if you mentor students or arestudying for a PGCE.We want to involve MFL teachers at every stage of ourwork: do get in touch for information or with ideas forother projects: charlotte@stephen-spender.org@StephenSpender@TranslationExch@charlotteryland1www.stephen-spender.org2www.queens.ox.ac.uk/translation-exchange3http://www.stephen-spender.org/TIS_workshops/lucy.html4http://www.stephen-spender.org/spender_prize.html5http://www.multilingualcreativity.org.uk/suggested-poems-stephen-spender-prize6http://www.multilingualcreativity.org.uk/poetry-translation-castshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeD5N8ni02vLx6DLGE0-RdQ7http://www.stephen-spender.org/spender_prize.html8http://www.stephen-spender.org/polish_spotlight.html9http://www.stephen-spender.org/TIS_workshops/creative_translation.html10https://pop-up.org.uk/project/pop-up-festival-multilingual-literature/www.all-languages.org.uk Summer 2020 5
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 35 | SUMMER 2020THE MAGAZINE
Page 3: WELCOMEI trust you are well, happy
Page 8: RESOURCESThe latest in language sup
Page 11 and 12: PRIMARY BLOGPrimary language teache
Page 14: ‘BUT… I HAVE TO SHOW THAT I AM
Page 18 and 19: THE BIGIDEATHE BIG IDEA:CULTURAL CA
Page 21 and 22: WHAT’SYOURAMBITION?PROFILEOllie W
Page 24: A DAYIN THELIFELT readers already k
Page 28: Terry LambOne of my richest experie
Page 32: Help from ALL’s Gold Corporate Me
Page 36: PRESIDENT’S BLOGALL President Jan
Page 40 and 41: ALLMembersPageOPPORTUNITIES TO BE A
Page 42: The UK’s major subject associatio

Language-Today-Issue-35-May-2020

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?