NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice

The next meeting of the Third Level Teachers of Business German in Ireland will take place on Friday 5 October from 10 am to 4pm at the Gothe-Institut, 62 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2. 

The theme of this seminar will be ‘Developing intercultural competence in German studies’. The focus of the workshop is on teaching intercultural communication within German studies. Emphasis is placed not just on cognitive learning, but also on behavioural and affective levels of student learning.

You can download further information here.

Many thanks to our colleague Doris Devilly, of the German Department in NUI Galway, who has highly recommended the following resources for teaching and learning German:

• www.slowgerman.com

• www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com  

We will add these to our links bar at the left hand side of the NDLR Modern Languages Community of Practice blog.

If you have any websites to recommend to colleagues please contact ndlrmodernlanguages@nuigalway.ie who will be delighted to add these resources to this blog.

Congratulations to all winners of the 2007 European Award for Languages who had a great day out at the Clock Tower building at the Department of Education and Science, Dublin yesterday September 26 - the European Day of Languages.  The ceremony was a wonderful occasion, and congratulations must be extended to Ivanna Darcy and the team at Léargas, for all of their efforts.

Prof. Catherine O’Brien is pictured here receiving the award for the ‘Service Learning in Italian’ pilot programme, on behalf of Dr. Anne O’Connor, NUI Galway (see previous post describing this project below).  

You can click on the following links to download zip files of pictures taken during the 2007 Ceremony (zip 1, zip 2, zip3, zip 4, zip 5).

We will be celebrating the achievements of the 2007 award winners over the coming weeks through our podcast series, so stay tuned and prepare to be inspired by a range of wonderful modern language teaching and learning initiatives that are happening across the country. 

Our colleagues at the ATLTGI would like to disseminate some additional information for members attending the 2007 AGM at IT Tallaght on Saturday 13 October from 10.30 to 17.00.  The theme of the accompanying conference will be “Das neue Deutschland“.

• Click here to download the AGM Members’ Letter.
• Click here to download the AGM Final Programme.
• Click here to download directions to IT Tallaght.

Since the AFA (Applied French Association) was founded in 1987, Ireland has been transformed from a mono-cultural society to a multicultural and multilingual society. These transformations present certain challenges and opportunities for us as language teachers. To celebrate 20 years in existence, the AFA, in conjunction with the French Embassy would like to invite you to participate in an exceptional conference where renowned French university lecturers will present their research and experience in this field.

The title of the event is ‘Multilingualism and diversity in Ireland: a new challenge for language teachers?’ and it will take place at the Dublin Institute of Technology (Cathal Brugha Street – Kathleen O’Sullivan Theatre) on Thursday 11 October from 5.30 to 9.00. Attendance is free.

Further information on the speakers, presentations and themes can be found at the AFA web site or by downloading the programme outline here.

The NUIG Italian Department public lecture series is underway. The theme of the series is ‘Italian Achievements – Then and Now’.  The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, September 26
The ideal and the real in Italian painting: Renaissance to Baroque
William Gallagher, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin

Tuesday, October 3
Understanding recent Italian politics: a political enigma?
Brendan Flynn, NUI, Galway.

Tuesday, October 10
Shakespeare’s Italy: a journey through never–never land
Marco Liviero, Eton College, Windsor, UK

Tuesday, October 17
Piave and Verdi’s Rigoletto: a drama of derision?
Deirdre O’Grady, University College, Dublin

Tuesday, October 24
Pirandello’s drama Six characters in search of an author:
bewitched but not bothered or bewildered
Ann Callaghan, University College, Cork

Tuesdays at 7.30 pm

Lecture Hall AM 150 – Arts Millennium Building, Newcastle Road, Galway.

Admission Free All Welcome Refreshments Afterwards

If you or your institution has any events, book launches, seminar series etc., that you would like promoted to the Higher Education languages’ community through this blog, please email ndlrmodernlanguages@nuigalway.ie or ring 091 492325.

All information shared helps to inform our community. 

We would like to congratulate all students. parents and staff involved in the 2007 Junior Certificate, the results of which were published last Wednesday.

A quick survey of the Irish boardsheets with regards to modern foreign languages reveals the following:

Source: Sean Flynn, Irish Times (click here for article)

• One of the most striking features of this year’s results is the very high failure rate (14 per cent) in ordinary-level French. A similar percentage failed the exam last year.
• The percentage taking French (61 per cent) declined by three percentage points since last year.
• Failure rate at higher-level French has increased to 7 per cent this year.
• Failure rates in ordinary-level Spanish is 9 per cent.
• The proportion of candidates taking French has dropped from 63.9pc in 2005 to 61pc, while take-up in German is down from 18.3pc in 2006 to 17.7pc

Source: Gráinne Fuller, Irish Times (click here for article)

• The gender gap in education shows no signs of narrowing, with girls outperforming boys in virtually all Junior Cert examination subject at higher level.
• The widest gap was in English, German and Italian with differences in grades between girls and boys at 11 per cent.
• The gap was narrower in languages such as Irish, French, Latin and Spanish, but was still significant. Almost 83 per cent of girls in higher-level Irish attained an honour, compared to 74 per cent of boys.
• Over 13 per cent of girls got an A in Irish and 12 per cent achieved the same grade in English. For boys, the A rate was 7.9 per cent in both subjects.
• Eight per cent of boys failing the ordinary-level Irish paper, compared to just four per cent of girls.
• The French exam had a higher failure rate for both genders at almost 11 per cent for girls and 17 per cent for boys. German and Spanish told a similar tale.

Source: Irish Independent (Click here for article)

• Irish has dropped to seventh position in the popularity league of Junior Certificate subjects, with about one in eight candidates not sitting the exam.
• The drop in numbers taking the national language is evident at ordinary and foundation level, although there was a rise in numbers taking the subject at higher level, from 21,953 in 2006 to 22,493 this year.
• In Irish, 13.2pc of girls obtained As on higher level papers and 35.5pc obtained B grades, compared with 7.9pc of boys attaining A grades and 29.4pc getting B grades.
• At ordinary level, 6.6pc of girls and 2.9pc of boys obtained A grades, while 37.2pc of girls and 26.9pc of boys notched up B grades.

The NUIG Community Knowledge Initiative Service Learning in Italian pilot programme recently won a 2007 European Award for Languages.

This new programme has been developed by Dr. Anne O’Connor in the NUIG Department of Italian and gives university students the opportunity to learn about language acquisition and allows them to put this learning into practice by teaching introductory classes in Italian to primary schools in the Galway area.  Due to the nature of the practical work in the context of primary school children, there is a strong emphasis on language acquisition through fun and games.  

Click here to listen to our latest podcast interview with Anne O’Connor.

Further information on the project can be found at the NUI Galway Italian Department web page; information on Community Knowledge Initiatives at NUI Galway can be found here.  Finally, you can find further information on the European Award for Languages from the Léargas web site.  

We hope that you are well rested after our glorious summer and are ready for another exciting academic year!

This is your Modern Languages’ Community of Practice website, so please contact ndlrmodernlanguages@nuigalway.ie if you would like to add any news items, colleague contact details, forthcoming events, or suggestions for podcasts and they will be added to this blog.

To start the academic year off on the right foot, the NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice will be opening up the national repository database to all modern language colleagues over the coming weeks.

This will mean that you will be issued with repository login details to access, search, download, and use over 1000 free learning objects which have been created by your Irish HE colleagues across the academic spectrum.

300 of these learning objects are specific to modern languages and are offered to you in the spirit of the NDLR project objective to ’share and share alike’ resources and information accross the Irish HE sector.

Further details on how to access and log onto the NDLR repository will be posted soon. 

The NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice team