Foreign language boost for Gozo students

Gozitan secondary level students are boosting their foreign language skills by doing what improves language most - practising with native speakers. And they don't even have to step out of the school premises.

Four young trainee teachers from Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium have been assisting language teachers at Can. Gan Frangisk de Soldanis Junior Lyceum and secondary school for girls under funding from Comenius, a European Union educational programme. Another trainee, from France, is at the Ninu Cremona school for boys.

Under the scheme, aspiring teachers apply to do a three- to eight-month stint helping teach their mother tongue in another European country, and are matched with schools who apply for assistants in particular languages.

The Gozitan schools, in Victoria, are the only two in Malta to have applied to take part in the scheme this year, said de Soldanis assistant head Saviour Grech, who is also a member of Malta's Socrates coordinating committee, under which Comenius falls.

"The assistants speak to the students exclusively in their own languages during the lessons," said Mr Grech.

"And their enthusiasm is contagious. The students always look forward to their lessons and get on very well with them. The presentation of foreign language lessons has also improved as a result of their input."

Furthermore, this was a "real-life experience of the European dimension", about which so much is said but little experienced. "Inter-cultural cooperation in the EU has come closer to home".

After spending the first week in observation, the assistants joined in the lessons, for example by reading texts to aid listening comprehension or helping with projects about their home country.

By their own accounts, they have injected new ideas and vigour to the foreign language teaching that goes on in the school. "We come from different countries and different systems, so we can pass on something new to the teachers," said Andrea Gimenez of Spain, one of the assistants.

All the assistants remarked that back home they had been taught a more student-centred way of doing things, rather than the traditional front-of-class teaching style.

Andrea, for example, gets one group of students to "guide" another around the "city of Barcelona", using maps and other tools.

Almut Braun, from Germany, helps students prepare presentations for each other and play games that revolve around language, making the lessons more entertaining.

And Vanessa Hallot, from Belgium, a French language assistant, has been using songs to get the class to learn new vocabulary, verbs and so on. The innovative approach is the subject of her university thesis.

"Maybe we have added something more 'spicy' to the lessons, a breath of fresh air," said Stephanie Coupé, of France.

The visitors have also helped set up resource rooms where one for their own language did not exist before.

It is not just the students of foreign languages who are benefiting from their visit. A condition of the programme is that all the students in the school are given at least one lesson from a visiting assistant teacher. When another teacher is absent, whatever the subject, they step in to give a lesson about the culture of their country.

Why choose Malta, particularly Gozo, an obscure island that not many Europeans might have heard of, I ask the five visitors over coffee and cake at a Gozo hotel.

Well, actually, we didn't, they all replied except Stephanie. They said the UK had been their first choice, because they wanted to improve their English (some of them are going to be English teachers when they get home), but were advised that places in Britain were limited and that Malta was also English-speaking. And they haven't regretted it.

They all talked of growing personally and professionally during their visit, while Anna D'Agostino, of Italy, said she just loved the little island - so much that she has extended her visit.