"Parlez-vous Comenius?"
Language learning gets a boost thanks to EU award

by Esra - 10th Grade

Have you ever felt like you have been studying English forever, but still feel like you can't string a simple sentence together when you talk? Well, never fear - you are not alone...

According to an article on the language website tpr-world, only 5% percent of students who start learning a foreign language continue on to gain fluency in speaking, reading and writing. In fact, for an amazing 95% of students who start learning a new language, the only thing they end up saying is, "I give up!" An alarming thought, eh?

At our school, we've been studying French for 5 years now, but heck, we are nowhere near fluent. Don't misunderstand me - we have some amazing teachers! It's just that French, in my opinion, is one of the hardest languages one can try to study. There are lots of different verbs and many of those verbs have different conjugations. And can anybody understand the rules about masculine and feminine nouns? As David Sedaris says in his short story, Make That A Double, "Hysteria, psychosis, torture, depression: I was told if something is unpleasant, it's probably feminine. This encouraged me, but the theory was blown by such masculine nouns as murder, toothache and Rollerblade. I have no problem learning the words themselves, it's the sexes that trip me up and refuse to stick."

Anyway, I digress. Babies never seem to have any trouble learning language from their parents, and it is widely accepted that students who try to learn a foreign language in an authentic setting go through the same process that babies go through, but they learn that language faster and better. For this reason, this year, seventeen fortunate language students at Hisar Schools are rejoicing, thanks to winning an extremely generous scholarship from EU, as part of the Comenius Project.

Named after the famous pedagogue, philosopher, writer and politician, the Comenius Project is essentially a student exchange program that aims to reflect Comenius' revolutionary ideas about education and the human condition. His vision of community makes him the precursor of the EU.

This Comenius Project scholarship will bring Turkish and French students together; allowing a group of Hisar Schools students to go to Grenoble in France where they will work with French students on common school projects, in mixed groups. In return, next fall, the French students will come to Turkey to carry on with this work, here in our own school.

But what exactly will they be doing in Grenoble? The concept is simple - it's always important to be able to understand different cultures and points of view, the more so given Turkey's negotiations for possible full membership of the Union. So it is hoped that this project will encourage Turkish students to engage and learn from their French counterparts, and vice versa. The key idea of the project is that we will compose an e-magazine together with our partners, based on a wide variety of topics for research. "The idea is to write an on-line newspaper article with a double point of view and possibly in three languages (English and French, with some Turkish) The French students are busy learning the intricacies of our language already!" says Mme Odile Pouchol, the coordinator of the Comenius Project in France.

One other interesting part of this program is that we will be staying with host families in France. This way, we will have a better chance to see how families with different cultures live their lives. We will also get to know our French partners better, by sharing each other's lives - and it will certainly be easier to become good friends! In fact, we've already started on that path, with many exchanges, chats and debates facilitated by the European Schoolnet's programme of "etwinning". (See: www.etwinning.net)

There are three main objectives for Bilateral Comenius Projects. First, in line with Comenius's original philosophy, the project aims to remove stereotypes and get to know other people better. Secondly, it aims to expose us to each other's cultures and improve our language skills through meaningful, joint activities. Finally, it aims to improve our creative and communicative skills through challenging interactions that require us to use our imaginations.

For this reason, the project is as important to the EU and to the French, as it is to us. Mme Pouchol emphasised the value of the project to the EU in my interview with her by declaring: "The European Commission wants schools to promote these kinds of projects because they think developing intercultural objectives is most important in education". Apparently, whether the country belongs to the EU is not the main issue (though they should have candidate status). "We had a project with Romania and Bulgaria years before they joined the EU", she says. (We may note however, that Turkey has been a full member of all EU educational programmes since the opening of negotiations for membership in 2004, and included in some programmes from a much earlier date).

Later, I asked other participants what they hoped to get out of this project. Their expectations were exactly like mine. They all said they wanted to make new friends, to learn from inside a new culture, to see Grenoble and, importantly, to improve their French. What more could anyone want?

"Intercultural contacts- losing prejudices- friendship" - these are the three elements Mme Pouchol chose to describe the importance of Comenius Projects to me and I agree that they summarize the philosophy perfectly. I believe that this project will be one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and I hope that, in the words of Mme Pouchol, we can step a little closer towards really "fighting preconceived ideas, opening minds to other cultures, becoming friends, and finally realising we can speak the languages we learn at school with confidence".

Turkish Daily News