Teaching and learning materials

The main purpose of this activity is to make participants recognise which fragments of texts belong to the same language and to put these fragments into the right order to get a coherent sequence. Participants have to consider on similarities between the different fragments as well as on their previous knowledge of other languages. They also have to indicate which language it is.
The activity is divided into five tasks. The first unit of 60 minutes covers the first three tasks, the second unit deals with tasks 4 and 5.
For the first task, the teacher hands out photocopies of table 1 containing 33 fragments of texts written in 11 European languages (three fragments of text in each language). The students work on their own or in small groups. They try to group the fragments and to put them into the right order, writing their solutions – and if possible the name of the languages - into a grid.
The second task focuses on the students’ reflection on the way they solved the first task, explaining their strategies both for finding the fragments of one language and for choosing the right order and for determining the language
In the third task, the students are supposed to find European language families and match the 11 languages to the corresponding family.
Tasks 4 and 5 deal with more unfamiliar languages, spoken in French Guyana. In its structure, task 4 corresponds to task 1 and in task 5, students are requested to identify two European languages which are related to two of the three languages analysed.
This activity aims at openness towards languages and language diversity, as well as at becoming aware that one spontaneously refers to other language varieties already known when confronted with a new language variety.
The complexity of this activity can be raised by adding other languages or reduced by removing some languages.

Duration: 1x60 + 1x30