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Lingwistyczne szlify
Lingwistyczne szlify
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project is designed for the school complex ( grammar school and technical college) struggling for a long time with the question of being perceived as a provincial school due to its location in Knurów - a little town (40-thousand dwellers) situated in Silesian agglomeration. This issue, especially nowadays, in the time of a demographic crisis, leads to problems with recruitment of students for the next school year. As a part of a reparation scheme, a European plan of development has been designed for the school aiming at increasing the quality of school work especially when it comes to the level of foreign languages being taught. Educational success of both good students (excellent results in final exams, obtaining language certificates, studies abroad and successful professional life) as well as weak students (increase in motivation to learn, preventing disappointment with school and school failures) will contribute to improving opinion about the school shared in the local community and will, as a consequence, lead to the increase in the number of students willing to continue their education in this school after graduating from junior high schools.
There are eleven participants of the project: a school headmistress and ten in-service foreign language teachers working in the school for several years. They are all ambitious and persistent individuals, not afraid of new professional challenges and realizing their vocation for teaching with great passion and dedication. They want to take a challenge of increasing the quality of school performance starting from themselves- raising their linguistic, cultural, social and personal qualifications. Participation of the group of teachers in a professional training abroad with special attention paid to its cultural and linguistic aspect seems to be the best solution for the school in its current plight.
It is firmly believed by all those teachers that the increase in the language level they represent as well as wider knowledge of the culture, customs and history of the foreign country they want to visit gained on the basis of the teachers’ own experience, will contribute to the increase in the language level of students and consequently their better results in the final exams. New ideas, techniques, ways of sharing knowledge with students, ways of motivating students to learn foreign languages picked up by the project participants during the course will surely help to engage students more in their own learning process and will prevent school failures of both poor students as well as those with low motivation to learn.
Making acquaintances with the project participants from different countries will facilitate looking for partners for student exchange programmes and also for joined projects carried out with the use of eTwinning platform. Those actions will contribute to raising students’ awareness that a foreign language really is a means of communication which, metaphorically speaking, opens many different doors around the world shortening distances between people and giving them many opportunities to develop personally and to realize their own potential. The chance for integration with citizens of different countries and nationalities will make it possible for the students from our school to develop the sense of so-called ‘euroenthusiasm’ – a belief in Europe without barriers, as well as will increase motivation of some students to choose linguistics and/or European culture as the main subject of their studies.
Many of our students (especially those from bilingual classes) see their future in practical use of foreign languages learnt at our school not only during studies (e.g. philological) but also in their professional life in the home country and/or abroad. Increase in the foreign language level represented by the students from our school will make it possible for them to obtain better results in their final exams and will therefore create for them more life opportunities.
Location of our town is characterized by substantial concentration of both domestic and foreign companies performing in the international market. There is high probability that the graduates from our school will look for employment in those places. A very good command of foreign languages achieved thanks to intensive language education in our school will maximize the chances of the young people to find a job in the region and at the same time in the international job market.
Teachers’ participation in the foreign courses that the school applies for in the project seems to be therefore a great chance for our small community to equip our adolescents with the knowledge and skills that they will use as adults to increase the prosperity of their town, home country and finally the continent - Europe.