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Mobilitet Fremmedspråk Rogaland
Start date: Aug 15, 2016, End date: Jun 14, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Rogaland County is considered to be Norway's most international county, since quite a few international corporations have their headquarters in the "oil capital" Stavanger and nearby surroundings. It is therefore of great importance to recruit young people with an extensive competence in the most commonly used foreign languages, those apart from English being French and German. The most recent Norwegian reform of the upper secondary educational system had the unpredicted consequence that many students chose to leave out the highest level, level 3, of foreign language studies, since it was no longer obligatory. In order to have more students complete level 3, the school owner of upper secondary education, Rogland County Council, RCC, has developed a strategy plan, supported by its politicians. The curriculum of foreign languages is intended to be a continuous journey starting in lower secondary on level 1, and proceeding on level 2 in upper secondary. However, there is no seamless continuation between the levels, and unfortunately, many students fail the course of level 2 in upper secondary. One part of the strategy plan is to work closer with the lower secondary level in deciding on which competencies to focus on. Another is to work systematically with in-service-teacher training regarding didactics. Classroom observation show that many teachers work very traditionally, and not all students benefit from a strictly academic approach to language learning. It is therefore very important to make teachers aware of alternative methodology, and to give them new tools to improve work in the language classroom. The aim is to have more students enjoy their language learning, thus passing level 2, which in turn also will give a larger group of students who will be able to move on to level 3. RCC has developed in-service-teacher training courses to meet the needs for new didactics in the language classroom in close cooperation with the universities of Trier in Germany and Grenoble in France, covering German and French as foreign languages. Both courses have been carried out and evaluated by the early participants, enabling the institutions to make changes to improve the quality of the courses. The eight upper secondary schools taking part in this consortium project all see the need for in-service-teacher training regarding modern didactics of language learning. Some have had teachers participate in the pilot projects, and would like all of their teachers to get the opportunity to participate and benefit from these courses. This will help create common ground for further quality boost in the language classrooms, as will better knowledge of the European Framework with its levels A1, A2, B1, etc. This will also help in the ongoing discussions with their colleagues in lower secondary. RCC has engaged in the exchange program with France, Kari Quarré, with L'Academie Grenoble as partner. All schools in the consortium will be a part of the exchange from next school year, and would like to take the opportunity of Job-shadowing to explore more possibilities in the relationship with their partner schools. Students taking part in the exchange so far have sometimes encountered practical problems when attending school, and getting to know the partner schools better will help prevent this from happening. Intentions are to make the learning of French more attractive, and to develop new projects involving the partner schools in other fields of education. French as a foreign language is losing ground in Norway, and RCC is seeking new ways to attract more learners. Students need more than ever to be in command of foreign languages, and to posess intercultural competencies. RCC and the consortium schools have designed this project to improve the quality of the language classrooms, to be able to encourage the students to reach higher levels of language competencies.

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