EU projects DIVIS and Speech Bubbles

Multilingualism, Regional & Minority Languages: Paradigms for ‘Languages of the Wider World’

International conference at the SOAS this week: (16th/17th April 2009)

This international conference is organised jointly by the Languages of the Wider World CETL (LWW CETL) at SOAS and UCL in the UK, and the MERCATOR European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning at the Fryske Akademy in the Netherlands.

All people have the right to learn and use their mother-tongue, and to learn a second and third language. This formal right is often absent and its use in practice is often less well guaranteed and less developed than should be the case, especially for speakers of smaller languages variously labelled as ‘regional’, ‘minority’, ‘immigrant’, ‘community’ (including sign languages), ‘heritage’ languages, etc. The conference will focus on theoretical and empirical work in research and implementation of teaching and learning models and strategies for language learning.

More here.

The first chapter of the DIVIS online guide is published. “Video words” is the entry level area especially for primary schools. You can find a brief overview of the ideas, a step-by-step guide and a word matrix with different options of what can be done.

You can find it all on the divisproject.eu site.