Celebrate the 15th anniversary of the European Day of Languages with CESIE!

On September 26^th 2016, let’s celebrate language diversity within the European Union!

The European Day of Languages was established by the European Commission and the Council of Europe back in 2001. Fifteen years on, with Europe becoming an increasingly multicultural environment and with the rising danger of extremism and xenophobia, let this day be a chance to celebrate the linguistic and cultural differences enriching our Union, the 24 official languages, the 60 minority languages and all other languages spoken by people across the EU. Let’s thus seize this opportunity to reflect on the values of tolerance and inclusion, and to remind ourselves of the meaning of the motto “United in diversity”.

This is what CESIE is committed to achieve through its involvement in two initiatives funded within the Erasmus+ programme, which are aimed at promoting language learning at school and among adults through the use of technology-enhanced tools and Open Educational Resources (OERs):

• The project POLYGLOT – Multilingual education in preschool age is aimed to help parents and educators to fully exploit the potential of web-based OERs in pre-school bilingual education. The project has developed and is now piloting a series of resources, including two Guides and the two E-courses respectively addressed to parents and educators on how to use Open Educational Resources to foster bilingualism in pre-school children (soon available online). All project partners are now organising activities with parents, educators and children in Austria, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Cyprus with a view to test and finalise the resources produced within the project.
• The project LangMOOCs – Language Massive Open Online Courses is aimed to promote the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in non-academic institutions, highlighting their potential in language learning. Within the project, five OER-based language courses were developed (English, Italian, Greek, German and Norwegian) corresponding to a beginner’s level and covering the main language competences of speaking, writing, listening, reading. The courses are available for free at https://study.langmooc.com .

Take an active part in the celebration of European cultural and linguistic diversity: discover new ways to encourage multilingualism and language learning in your family or work setting, and in your daily life!

For more detailed information about current activities carried out by CESIE in the field of languages please contact: francesca.vacanti@cesie.org .

Useful links:

• Celebrate the European Day of Languages 2016 (hashtag #EDLangs): https://ec.europa.eu/education/events/20160916-european-day-languages_en
• Events per country: https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/european-day-languages-events_en.pdf
• European day of languages website: http://edl.ecml.at/Home/tabid/1455/language/en-GB/Default.aspx