Topic: European Day of Languages (EDL)

Class: 2nd and 3th grade of upper secondary school

CEFR level: B2

No of students: 125 students of 2nd grade (five classes) and 75 students of 3rd grade (three classes)

No of sessions: 2 and a follow-up project based task to find out the degree of multilingualism  in the students?  hometown (Alexandroupolis, Greece)

Type of approach: Eclectic (task-based and communicative approach)

Objectives: By the end of the sessions the students are expected to

• 1.have been informed about the EDL and its objectives
• 2.have understood the importance of foreign language learning and its relevance to our everyday life, thus realising the value of plurilingualism
• 3.have been introduced to various forms of autonomous
• 4.have been presented some interesting facts about world languages, some interesting facts about the English language and some quotations about languages

Skills involved: Writing, Speaking, Listening, Reading

Handouts supplied: the presentation and some vocabulary

Worksheets supplied: One fill-in activity the data of which is used to find out the degree of multilingualism in the students? hometown.

Procedure

Session 1

The teacher presents each question of her presentation

• 1.What is the European Day of Languages?
• 2.What are the objectives of the European Day of Languages?
• 3.Why is it important to know more than one language?
• 4.How can you learn a language?

And the students are asked to brainstorm possible answers. Their answers are enriched by the teacher?s ones and presented to them.

Finally the students? are presented some interesting facts about world languages, some interesting facts about the English language and are asked to study them from the given handouts because they are going to play a game the next time and they are supposed to know them if they are to win something.

Session 2

The students are divided in two groups of 10-12 and each group is given a flower game. The teacher projects the instructions and the players start playing.

The questions of the question cards are the following:

• 1.what do we celebrate on 26^th September?
• 2.How many official languages are there in the European Union?
• 3.How many languages are there in the world?
• 4.What?s the native language of most Europeans?
• 5.Which is the second most commonly spoken language in the world?
• 6.Which is the third most commonly spoken language in the world?
• 7.Which is the only Celtic language which is recognized as an official language in Europe?
• 8.Which is the only Semitic language in the European Union?
• 9.What?s Esperanto?
• 10.What?s the official language of the US?

When the game is over, they are given the worksheet to fill in the relevant information about them and they are also asked to fill in corresponding information about their parents at home. They are asked to bring the worksheet next time so that the relevant results can be drawn and presented to them.

 K. Fournari

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2 - EDL - PRESENTATION
3 - EDL - STUDENTS' HANDOUTS
4 - EDL - VOCABULARY
5 - EDL - FLOWER GAME
6 - EDL - FLOWER GAME - KEY
7 - EDL - FLOWER GAME - PHOTOS
8 - EDL - TASK