Editorial

‘Creativity in language learning' is a Key Activity 2 Languages Accompanying measures project started in December 2011 and co-funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme. It is aimed at bringing out the importance of the intercultural and creative dimensions in language learning and at promoting and encouraging linguistic and cultural diversity.

We hope that this issue will help to promote the project’s results, materials and methods to a wider audience, and it will encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences as well.

Supporting creativity

Emotions and feelings are often kept out of language courses, as if learning involved only the rational part of an individual. As a consequence, the learner does not feel involved and often has only a passive role in the learning process.

The project is based on the assumption that creative and less conventional devices such as drama, songs and video clips are very effective methodological tools in language teaching and that they can target different audiences, from children to adults, being thus consistent with the objectives of the transversal programme.

The CREALLE project has the following mission: collecting and defining a series of methodological tools that show the effectiveness of creativity while learning both for junior and adult learners and at the same time making these tools known to the greatest number of language teachers and trainers.  

The project target groups are school teachers (foreign language teachers in particular) and other educational workers who work with children and youngsters; school principals, adult educators, life-long learning providers; students, etc., as well as decision-makers from different levels of the educational systems in the project partner countries.

CREALLE project provides a set of activities:

• Four interactive seminars organized in UK, BG, IT and DE, two multilingual newsletters, a special issue of a periodical, a website in five languages (EN, FR, DE, IT and BG), an international conference and a Projects Fair in Brussels in order to disseminate 4 creative projects in language learning:
• Theatre Express  www.lewis-school.co.uk/theatre
• Languages and Integration through Singing  www.languagesbysongs.eu
• Digital video streaming and Multilingualism  www.divisproject.eu
• Broad Sweeps of Imagination: a new method to teach a foreign language www.bsiproject.com
• Research activities in order to select the best creative practices for the EU-funded projects and products that will be chosen for the dissemination at the International Conference and to be made available on the website in the form of a virtual library
• Achievement of a course for teachers/trainers interested in exploring creative approaches to language teaching.

What's on

The next two seminars will be held in Naples (April 18, 2012) and in Berlin (May 25, 2012) while the International Conference will be held in Brussels (November 15 & 16, 2012)

More detailed information on:

www.languagelearning.eu

Promoter	Coordinator	Partner	Partner

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