CARAP teaching and learning materials

Descriptors:

The object of this activity is to familiarize the students with first and last names which are linked to particular languages / cultures, as well as to raise awareness to possible existence of the same or similar names in other languages they know. In the first part of the activity, the students are provided with a number of names which can be linked to particular languages / cultures and are asked to classify them as either female, male or family names. The corresponding audio file allows the students to check their answers, while at the same time practicing their listening comprehension. In the following part of the activity, the students are asked to provide same or similar names which appear in other languages they know (French, Italian, Spanish, German, etc.) This may prove additionally motivating for students, as they are asked to use their own experience and knowledge of the world, raising awareness of possible similarities and differences between romance languages, other foreign languages they have learnt, their native language(s), languages of their environment. N.B. There are equivalent activities available in French, Italian and Spanish.

Themes: history of languages/language familiesproper noun/ first name

Source: Holzinger et al. (2012) Découvrons le français. Französisch interlingual, Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch mit interaktiver CD-ROM. Vienna: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, p. 10 Holzinger et al. (2012) Scopriamo l’italiano. Italienisch interlingual, Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch mit interaktiver CD-ROM. Vienna: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, p. 11-12 Holzinger et al. (2012) Descubramos el español. Spanisch interlingual, Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch mit interaktiver CD-ROM. Vienna: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, p. 12

Descriptors:

The overall aim of this activity is to familiarize the students with the existence of different registers and degrees of formality in a language. In the first part of the activity, the students are supposed to listen to a conversation and answer questions related to it. The transcript of the conversation provided in the textbook allows the students to check their answers. In the following part of the activity, the students are provided with a table containing colloquial expressions taken from the youth language from the text and their counterparts in Italian. The translations of colloquial expressions into German are given in a box below the table. There are three stages to this part: Firstly, the students are asked to connect the corresponding colloquialisms in Italian and in German. Afterwards, the students are asked to provide their translations of the standard expressions into German. In the end, the students are asked to discuss and compare possible similarities and differences between Italian, German, and possibly other languages they know. N.B. There are equivalent activities available in French, Italian and Spanish. Duration: 2x45

Themes: cultural/linguistic mediation/translationgreetings/language rituals

Source: Holzinger et al. (2012) Scopriamo l’italiano. Italienisch interlingual, Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch mit interaktiver CD-ROM. Vienna: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky ((p.112-113) (allemand)

Descriptors:

The activity is designed for a class where there are children speaking different mother languages. The class is divided into groups of children speaking the same mother language or speaking the same language. The teacher makes copies of worksheet 9.2.1. The teacher makes copies of the cards and gives each group a card. The cards represent objects with an ‘international name’: e.g. kiwi, taxi, piano, yoghurt, garage, piano (list is given).The teacher asks to write a short description of the card (if children can not write their mother language or other language they prepare an oral description). Each group reads slowly his description and the class tries to understand the description. The teacher asks the class why they do understand some words in a language they do not speak.

Themes: comprehension strategieslinguistic borrowing

Source: Jonckheere, S., De Doncker, H., De Smedt, H. (2009). Talen op een Kier:Talensensibilisering voor het basisonderwijs. Mechelen: Plantyn.

Descriptors:

This activity deals with work on stereotyping and prejudice about other cultures: it involves working with perceptions that we have about minority groups, understanding how those stereotypes work and generating creativity and spontaneous ideas from the learners. Participants are asked to form teams of 3 or 4 people. Then, each team prepares a sheet and coloured crayons. Each group is then given a word (racism, discrimination, gay, African, human rights, etc.) and asked them to translate the word by creating a drawing. The other groups must guess what the drawing depicts. If they find the right answer, the team which presented this drawing wins a point. If they do not find it, they get no points. After having shown all the drawings made by all the teams, each artist writes the word under the drawing. The activity can be repeated several times so that everyone can have the opportunity to draw. In the end, the drawings are put up on boards, compared, and learners are invited to comment on the different interpretations shown.

Themes: identity/othernessminority/minority languagesprejudice/image of otherness

Source: Direction de la Jeunesse et du Sport, Conseil de l’Europe. / Directorate of Youth and Sport, Council of Europe.

Descriptors:

This activity, compiled in 7 romance languages (Portughese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian and Roumanian) deals with the food chain of living beings. Learners pair up, complete, reestablish the logical order and thus reflect upon the dietary habits of animals around them as well as those of distant places. Further on, learners are asked to look up information on insects and carnivorous plants. A story entitled « The boatman, the cabbage, the goat and the wolf » presents the learner with a problem which s/he must resolve by making hypotheses. These hypotheses can be confirmed or rejected through readings in 5 romance languages. Through metalinguistic exercises learners compare variants of the prefix « de » in romance languages, the words indicating the parts of the human body as well as temporal connectors. Another exercise raises awareness of latin roots in scientific terminology (omnivore, granivore, etc.)

Themes: animalsliterature/stories/talesnature/environment

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

Students are requested to analyse Italian words and their description in the dictionary, to find out in which language their origins are. Moreover, they are asked to identify and distinguish loanwords and calques. Languages presented are English, French, German and Spanish (duration : about 45 minutes).

Themes: history of languages/language familieslanguage variation/diversitylinguistic borrowing

Source: Curci, A.M., Mineni, E. & Rainoldi, M. (2006). Il mio portfolio delle lingue. Novara: De Agostini Scuola. (pages 3 and 4 of the PDF file)

Descriptors:

The overall goal of this activity is to make the students know their classmates and to show that we are all different but equal at the same time. This activity is presented as a chair game . The group must consist of 10 to 12 children. First, the students, seated on the chairs forming a circle, must mention something which is especially characteristic of them. If someone else in the group shares this characteristic, he or she has to jump up and say ""Me too!"". Then, he/she must sit on the lap of whoever said this feature. In the second round, we remove one chair and bring a student to the centre of the circle. This time, the student has to say things he/she believes that he/she shares with others. If others in the group share the mentioned feature, they must exchange their chairs. At that moment, the student standing in the center must take advantage of this exchange and try to sit down. The person who remains standing will restart the game. Finally, we propose a discussion about the differences that we find as well as the general characteristics of the group and human beings.

Themes: ingroup/outgroup

Source: Direction de la Jeunesse et du Sport, Conseil de l’Europe. / Directorate of Youth and Sport, Council of Europe.

Descriptors:

The main objective of this activity is to make students reflect on their images about others’ culture and the possibility to change these points of view by removing traditional stereotypes. It is important that, at the beginning, this activity must be presented as an exercise of creating a story in group. Later, they will know which the real goal is. In this activity students have to create a story which begins with “This is the story of Antonio, a young boy from Madrid”. Each pupil will add some information to create a story and some time later the teacher/monitor will create a new character, Ali who is a young boy from Morocco. When the story will be finish, they will draw which stereotypes have these characters and they will try to remove them. The instructions are written in English or French but the activity can be done in any language. The preparation of this activity is very easy: some sheets of papers and a ball. Moreover, it is a very flexible activity because you can adapt it to discuss about the stereotypes we have about immigrants, physically handicapped persons or homosexuals.

Themes: cultural/linguistic distance/proximityfeelingsprejudice/image of otherness

Source: Direction de la Jeunesse et du Sport, Conseil de l’Europe. / Directorate of Youth and Sport, Council of Europe.

Descriptors:

This activity, compiled in 7 romance languages (Portugese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian and Romanian) deals with the Middle Ages, the times of troubadours and the Crusades (X – XIII centuries) through extracts from songs and historical commentaries discussing the social and geopolitical context of the period. The learners study a song by Giraut de Bornelh, read about the life of Pèire Vidal, discover a song about the crusade against the Cathares. The activity which presents the life of Jaufré Rudel highlights Occitan, the language of the troubadours ; summaries written in 7 Romance languages are the basis upon which the learner reconstructs the love story between Rudel, an Occitan Count and the Countess of Tripoli, who never knew each other except through songs and the accounts of pilgrims. The activity offers a transversal study of the 7 languages being studied : identification of words which refer to the same object, identification of the expression of gender of words indicating titles of nobility (count – countess), comparison of forms of the definite and indefinite articles.

Themes: comprehension strategieshistoryliterature/stories/tales

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

This activity brings the period of Humanism, the Renaissance and its great discoveries to the pupil’s attention. The learner activates his/her intercomprehension skills when he/she examines 7 documents in 7 different romance languages (Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Catalan and Occitan). From these documents as well as the reading of two multilingual biographies, the pupil discovers the life of several personalities who had a determining effect on their times (Erasmus, Mercator, Rabelais, Christopher Colombus and Leonardo da Vinci). The learner also discovers knowledge about the origin and development of romance languages. As far as language work goes, the learner arrives at explicit discoveries: he/she identifies adjectives and nouns and compares their forms. The activity also proposes scanning which leads to the identification and discussion of the formation of adverbs in the languages in question.

Themes: comprehension strategiesgeographyhistory of languages/language families

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

Themes: comprehension strategiesliterature/stories/talesnature/environment

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

The phenomenon of Earth’s magnetism is explored in this activity where learners discover how a magnetic compass works. Through explanations in French and in Spanish, the children learn about magnetic attraction and about magnetic poles. These learners create a magnetic compass following an explanation in romance languages (Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, French, Rumanian, Catalan and Occitan). The activity includes discovery of the phenomenon of electromagnetism through experimentation, and how these phenomena are put to use in navigation. From the linguistic aspect, a story told in Portuguese, Occitan, Spanish, Italian and Rumanian about wind directions helps children learn about how indefinite articles function in 5 romance languages. The notion is related to the situation in French, along with the concept of “indefinite” as a grammatical category.

Themes: geographygrammar/syntax/morphologynature/environment

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

Learners carry out experiments in connection with the water cycle (evaporation, condensation and fusion). The work is explained in Rumanian, Italian and Catalan. Learners are required to put different stages of an experiment in order: the stages are written in related languages and also reformulate a story (Pourquoi l’ours n’a pas de queue) told in a comic strip. The different sequences are narrated in a romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Rumanian and Portuguese). Knowledge about the water cycle is reinforced by the story of the journey of a little drop of water in different countries where the official language is a romance language. Finally, the activity proposes activities which establish relationships of a morphosyntactic order: the dimLearners carry out experiments in connection with the water cycle (evaporation, condensation and fusion) (duration : about 300 minutes).inutive in five languages, recognition of the same verb or the same word in romance languages.

Themes: comprehension strategiesnature/environmentweather

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.

Descriptors:

"This activity aims to ensure that students are familiar with experiences such as the status of oppressed and oppressors, so they can understand better the situation of those who are oppressed by someone else or who make part of a minority. The teacher distributes labels in 2 different colours, e.g. yellow and green. Then the teacher explains a series of rules that will be applied in different ways depending on the colour of the label (between 6 and 8 rules). They give privileges to those who hold yellow label (for example) and bans to those who hold the green ones. This activity could be coupled with a leisure activity to make students experience their new condition in a real context. Finally the teacher asks the students to explain their feelings as a “yellow” or “green” participant. The whole group will make an assessment of the experience and discuss about the conditions of minority cultural groups. This activity offers alternatives and suggestions for follow-up. There is also an English version for this activity: http://www.eycb.coe.int/edupack/55.html."

Themes: customs/social normsingroup/outgroupminority/minority languages

Source: Direction de la Jeunesse et du Sport, Conseil de l’Europe. / Directorate of Youth and Sport, Council of Europe.

Descriptors:

Through work on 6 activities written in 7 romance languages: Portugese, Occitan, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Catalan, the learner gets to present numeric data in tables and graphs, as well as to understand the proportionality (population and surface area of different countries, exchange rates of Euro and English Pound). In the section “Allons plus loin” (Let’s go further) the learner makes calculations about different postage rates in his/her head and this leads him/her to situate different destinations. A section dedicated to explicit linguistic discovery invites the learner to reflect about culinary specialities reserved for festive occasions (Christmas, birthdays …) in the different countries observed. Linguistic content: identification of connectors and conjunctions related to cause and consequence, opposition, and situation in space as well as interrogative pronouns. Examination and comparison of these parts of speech.

Themes: celebrations/feastsgeographynumbers/numeration

Source: Escudé, P. (dir.). (2008). J’apprends par les langues : Manuel d’apprentissage européen des langues romanes. Toulouse : IUFM/CRDP de Midi-Pyrénées.