CARAP teaching and learning materials

Descriptors:

The activity, compiled in 7 romance languages (Portugese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian and Romanian) deals with the way electricity works on the basis of experiements and historical accounts of the discovery of electricity (Volta). The learner discovers different phenomena from everyday life which are linked to electricity : static electricity, circuits (batteries, lightbulbs) as well as the symbols which represent the different parts of a circuit (wire, switch, resistor …). The learner also gets to draw up important instructions for a safe use of electricity. Further on, the learner discovers the terminology linked to renewable energies and the importance of recycling. The language aspect of this activity deals with written instructions about using electricity in 7 languages. There is a discussion of the use of the negative in romance languages, identification of the word indicating approval (yes) in 7 languages, a discussion of lexical evolution in romance languages. These activities are proposed in the form of a transversal grammatical synthesis.

Themes: comprehension strategieshistorynature/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 overall goals of this role play are to make students ""analyse (their) attitudes towards people of different social and cultural groups”, “explore strategies for conflict resolution”, “reflect on the limits of tolerance” and “reflect on the relationship between discrimination and conflict of interest"". This will help them understand that they can solve conflicts ""positively"", that ""our own interests can distort , or even aggravate, our perception of the problem”, and that “our analysis and our approach to conflict differs according to the social and cultural background of the persons involved."" A minimum of 10 persons and a maximum of 25 are needed for this activity since it involves a minimum of 6 players (but not more than 9) and one observer. The problem to solve is that there is an apartment nearby that was rented out by foreign students who do not respect the community rules, make noise, etc. All the neighbours are meeting to try to solve the problem. One must keep in mind that each neighbour has his/her own interests. The first step consists of giving out the role cards, and allowing some time for the “meeting” to progress. At one point the ""the key to finding a solution"" is given to each player and some more time is allowed for the role play to develop. Finally, all the participants discuss the way the role play developed , as well as the relation between the game and this situation in real life.

Themes: conflict/violencedaily lifehabitat

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

Descriptors:

The overall aim of this activity is to make students think about the membership or rejection in a social group. It seeks to ensure that students can put themselves in the shoes of both an integrated member of a large cultural group and an isolated person or a minority group. The activity is presented as a very "physical" where students must make circles (shoulder against shoulder) in groups of 6-8 people. There must be a student outside the circle (the outsider) and he will try to enter for 2 or 3 minutes. There will also be an observer student who will take note of the strategies used by the outsider and the members of the circle, as well as verbal exchanges and everything that may seem important. This first part ends when all the students forming the circle have played the role of outsider. Then there will be an assessment of the activity and the question is what it feels like being into the circle and out of it. The class will discuss about the strategies that were used and the exchanges that occurred. Then, there can be a discussion about the importance of belonging to a cultural group in our society. The teacher asks if sometimes we prefer to be an outsider or to belong to a group. The class tries to relate this experience to reality and see the privileges of being into "the circle" and how minorities try to get in. This activity offers alternatives and suggestions for follow up. There is also an English version for this activity: http://www.eycb.coe.int/edupack/34.html."

Themes: ingroup/outgroupsocial/cultural/linguistic discrimination

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

Descriptors:

"The aim of this activity is to encourage students to read and try to globally understand a series of news items written in a language which is new to them, Maltese. In “Maltese News 1”, learners start by attempting to match the news item’s title to a corresponding picture. Later they are asked to try to read the news item and match it to the correct title. If they need help, students can ask for some hints which can guide them to get through the activity. At this stage a number of words derived from English and Romance languages will be highlighted. These words make up a substantial part of the Maltese lexicon. At the end, students are asked to reflect upon the activities they have just carried out and to think about other languages which have acted as “bridges” to the unknown language. In “Maltese News 2”, learners have already familiarized with the Maltese news items, and will now be asked to go a step further by actually attempting to answer some questions related to the contents of the news item. Learners must make use of skills such as observing and analysing linguistic elements which are more or less familiar to them, recognize loan words of international origin, compare phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of different languages and perceive / establish linguistic proximity and distance. At the end of the activities learners will be encouraged to watch a short feature on the Maltese ricotta ice-cream, Ġelat tal-irkotta, taken directly from the 8pm news on a local TV station. In this listening activity, learners must make use of the knowledge and comprehension skills already mastered in languages which are familiar to them. Duration: 45mins + 45 mins Card compiled by: Phyllisienne Gauci, Raymond Facciol"

Themes: comprehension strategieslinguistic borrowing

Source: Phyllisienne Gauci, Raymond Facciol (Malta)

Descriptors:

"The overall aim of this role play is to get students to ""analyze the messages handed down by family about people of different social and cultural background"" so that they are ""aware of the role of family in the transmission social values "". To make this activity the teacher will need a minimum of 8 students because four of them must play a role while the other four must observe in detail one specific actor. The actors are members of a family whose young daughter wants to live with her boyfriend who is of another race / culture. The family does not like this idea. Each actor gives his arguments. After the role play, players must explain their feelings and observers should read the arguments used by the actors. Then, there is a discussion about the role play including the whole group. ""You can adapt this activity to the cultural and social reality of participants"" and ""if you think the roles are too restrictive, or they have nothing to do with reality, you can create your own role cards defining four family behaviours typically found in your culture."""

Themes: conflict/violencefamilyprejudice/image of otherness

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

Descriptors:

The overall goal of this activity is to raise awareness of discrimination in everyday life, to promote empathy and to help participants gain confidence. The children, in groups of 6-8, are asked to think about a situation where they felt discriminated or where they saw someone discriminating somebody else. They are asked to describe one situation; each group should choose a case. The group should discuss and reflect upon what caused the situation, how the discriminated person feels, and whether s/he should have behaved the way s/he did. They should also discuss about the feelings of the person who discriminates, the reaction of the person who described the situation, and about what happened next. They were also asked to imagine what their behaviour would have been in a similar situation and to provide other ways to act. Finally, they should do a report on the most common reasons for discriminatory behaviour, the origin of this behaviour and the importance of the fight against discrimination (duration : about 45 minutes).

Themes: feelingsprejudice/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 gives students the opportunity to reflect on their family history and to relate it with nowadays’ sociocultural problems and globalisation. Pupils have to create their own family trees and pay attention to relatives who have emigrated, who were lesbians or homosexuals, who have been married to a foreigner, who have practised a different religion or who have spoken a different language. When the family trees are finished, they will discuss about their families and they will be more open-minded with immigrants because they will feel closer to them This activity does not need a difficult preparation although the student has to do a research at home about his/her family. The teacher only has to prepare a sample of a family tree.The most important point to take into account is the teacher/monitor behaviour: he has to be very careful not to force students to talk about their family.

Themes: familyidentity/otherness

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

Descriptors:

This set of activities begins with the cover of the famous book ‘The Little Prince’ and translations of its title into several languages. Learners are invited to identify these languages and reflect on their language families. Then, for five of these languages, they are given fragments of a summary which they have to rearrange into a complete summary. Reflections on themes such as equality, inclusion and differences can lead to the staging of a multilingual play. A detailed description of the set of activities and the worksheets can be found in the "Guide d'initiation aux approches plurilingues" (p. 92-101, Guide to Plurilingual Approaches, click on ‘Ouvrir la ressource" on the right. The guide is in French.

Themes: history of languages/language familiessocial/cultural/linguistic discrimination

Source: Marie-Paule Lory et Manon Valois, Guide d'initiation aux approches plurilingues, Centre franco, 2021, Ontario

Descriptors:

This activity offers an online quiz featuring several road signs written in different languages (quiz link). Learners must identify the corresponding languages; in doing so, they discover different writing systems and develop strategies to recognize them. The activity can be completed independently. A detailed description of the activity and suggestions for further development can be found in the ""Guide to Plurilingual Approaches"" (pp. 69-72, Guide to Plurilingual Approaches, click on ‘Ouvrir la ressource’ on the right).

Themes: transportsWriting (systems) / punctuation / orthography

Source: Marie-Paule Lory et Manon Valois, Guide d'initiation aux approches plurilingues, Centre franco, 2021, Ontario

Descriptors:

Learners use a geographical map of Denmark to access recordings of people speaking different Danish dialects. They compare the prosody and vocabulary choices of three variants with the standard language and the dialect of their region. They then reflect on the social image associated with these dialects and their stereotypes attributed to them. The worksheet is in Danish, but the activity can easily be adapted to other contexts.

Themes: cultural/linguistic distance/proximitylanguage variation/diversity

Source: Undervisningsforløb til 9. klasse (Prof. Petra Daryai-Hansen University of Copenhagen, Department of English, Germanic and Romance studies, Denmark)

Descriptors:

Using various videos in which speakers read the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in different languages, learners analyse the differences and the similarities of sounds and words in these languages. They then compare the sign languages used for this article in different languages.

Themes: phoneme/phoneticssign language/braille/codes

Source: Undervisningsforløb til 9. klasse (Prof. Petra Daryai-Hansen University of Copenhagen, Department of English, Germanic and Romance studies, Denmark)

Descriptors:

The main purpose of this activity, designed for students of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE) with Chinese as their mother tongue, is to instruct pupils about some social norms of behavior in Spanish society, which drastically differ from the social norms of behavior in Chinese-speaking countries. The activity in question forms part of a didactic series specifically developed with the cultural and linguistic specificities of Chinese students in mind and is, in fact, the second component of the full activity named ""Enseñanza sociocultural a alumnos chinos"" (the reference for the first part may be found on the link). It is advisable to engage in this activity only after having previously completed the first part of the lesson ""Enseñanza sociocultural a alumnos chinos I"". The activity continues to examine sociocultural aspects of Spanish which are most likely to create problems of communicative comprehension as well as misunderstandings which Chinese students may be exposed to in their encounter with Spanish people. The activity aims to acquaint and further sensitize students towards, cultural differences between Chinese and Spanish society Personal reflection and comparative analysis are chosen as the principal basis of instruction. First, working individually, students are asked to discover the crucial differences between both cultures and try to consider Spanish cultural particularities not as “strange” but as specific of this distinct culture (models of working texts are available). Personal observations are then shared in small groups and are ordered in a special card (model is available), so that pupils understand that there are not only differences between social behavior in China and Spain, but also that within Spanish society itself there may be a substantial variation of acceptance of the same actions. Finally, the activity expect students to analyse models of behaviour within Spanish society, and then to comment collectively on the possible answers. The activity in question may be used with pupils of B1 and higher levels. The activity has the advantage of being feasible both with individuals as well as with groups of different sizes. As far as linguistic skills are concerned, pupils improve reading comprehension, oral expression and written expression, all of them directed toward the the sensitization of Chinese students to the peculiarities of the Spanish culture.

Themes: cultural contactscustoms/social normsmisunderstanding

Source: Maximiano Cortés Moreno - Centro virtual Cervantes - DidactiRed

Descriptors:

The main purpose of this activity, oriented towards students of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE) with Chinese as their mother tongue, is to instruct pupils about some social norms of behavior in Spanish society, which drastically differ from the social norms of behavior in Chinese-speaking countries. The activity in question forms part of a didactic series specifically developed with the cultural and linguistic specificities of Chinese students in mind. . This first section focusses on sociocultural aspects of Spain and Spanish which may give rise to problems of communicative comprehension or misunderstandings to Chinese students in their interactions with the Spanish culture due to differences between these distant cultures. The objective of the activity is therefore o make the pupils aware of these differences so that they may act accordingly in their relations with persons coming from Spain. The skills which this activity aims to improve are listening comprehension, oral expression, written comprehension, and written expression. The introduction to this activity starts from a general and collective discussion of the differences between Spanish and Chinese cultures which pupils have already observed. The pupils are asked to read a text (available online) about a Spanish young man who goes to Taiwan. They are then expected to discover and comment on his behavior as revealing his knowledge (or lack of it) of Chinese traditions. Students’ observations of the case in hand are expressed individually and collectively, in oral and written form (a table to be filled in is available on the link). The activity itself consists of three stages. The first one, consisting of the reading of a text (available on the link) about the visit of a Chinese young man to a Spanish family, requires pupils to reflect about possible misunderstandings that may arise between the guest and his hosts. The second stage suggests working in groups of 4 persons, who reread the text and who try to find those actions of the Chinese young man which may have caused misunderstandings and clashes within the Spanish family. A table is available on the link so that groups may put down their observations and explanations. The third stage involves a collective comment on the topic. The activity may be used with students with B1 or higher levels of Spanish, and may be thus employed both collectively and individually. The comments of the activity propose additional links for finding out more information about teaching Spanish to Chinese-speaking students.

Themes: cultural contactscustoms/social normsmisunderstanding

Source: Maximiano Cortés Moreno - Centro virtual Cervantes - DidactiRed

Descriptors:

Pupils speak of cultural habits, drawing up written advice for travellers. Learners are led to understand gestures. After listening to accounts and examples concerning cultural diversity, the students will reflect on his / her own culture and the target culture. As a conclusion, the student develops a guide for a person of Spanish nationality who wishes to visit their own country.

Themes: customs/social normsgesturegreetings/language rituals

Source: Fernández Peña; R. (2007). Section ¿Cómo nos entendemos?, from the activity El componente sociocultural en la clase de ELE: Revista didáctica ELE, n° 6.

Descriptors:

A material designed for learners of Spanish as a foreign language at A1-B1 and for Spanish speaking students at secondary level. The six activities focus on lexical evolution while comparing Portuguese and Spanish and students attempt to understand the phonological rules in action as a consequence of this evolution.

Themes: history of languages/language familiesphoneme/phonetics

Source: Vega Llorente Pinto, Escuela Oficial de Idiomas of Salamanca, Spain