ERLA’S DIRECTORY – Section 1.3

SPACE WHERE ERLA MEMBERS CAN SHARE KEY RELEVANT FACTS, IDEAS, CONCEPTS AND FINDINGS 

VERBAL HIGHLIGHTS

 

FACTS
3rd ERL Session (3-4 March 2021) COVID – A source of threats or opportunities for linguistic education?
4th ERL Session (5-6 May 2021) Linguistic well-being (before, during, and after the pandemic)
5th ERL Session (20-21 October 2021) Has the pandemic changed your linguistic pedagogical trurths?
Publication of ERL Journal Volume 2021-1(5) COVID-19 –  A Source of Threats or Opportunities for Linguistic Education. Sections: Losses and gains on the pedagogical stratum. Challenges and perspectives on the linguistic stratum
Publication of ERL Journal Volume 2021-2(6) Linguistic Well-being (Before, After, and During the Pandemic). Sections: Recognising the linguistic well-being of students. Appreciating the linguistic well-being of educators
Introduction of ERL Strokes  Non-academic gathering aimed at the exchange of 2-minute “strokes” between nations, professions, races, or ages, and thus fostering interpersonal communication and good (but nearly forgotten) old practices of telling STORIES, JOKES, RIDDLES, AND DISCOVERIES 

 

IDEAS
Four-dimensional perspective on linguistic well-being

The 4-dimensional way of looking at linguistic well-being leads to the recognition of teaching technques catering for particular facets such as: (1) discussing students’ views and developing criticality – with regard to language beliefs, (2) talking about favourite words and raising sensitiviy to language – re. language affect, (3) practising particular language skills and focusing on fluency – re. language activity, (4) defining and negotaiting meanings, binding linguistic education with general education – re. language matrices (thinking)
Boosting linguistic well-being with virtual guests If you are interested in international collaboration and cross-cultural communication, the Virtual Guest Project (VGP) could be a simple and effective first step towards more ambitious projects. VGP makes possible collaboration among educational institutions from different countries around the world by using online communication tools. The procedure is simple, you invite a guest speaker (a colleague) from a different country to address your class. For more details on the procedure and the benefits of this activity, go to https://padlet.com/daniela56/VGP

 

VISUAL HIGHLIGHTS

 

CONCEPTS
The key idea of ERL Strokes is to build up together an international collection of “strokes” ready for your use during any social occasions. The concept was prompted by Eric Burne’s theory (whereby strokes are defined as fundemental units of social interaction). In ERLA, though, strokes are extened and cover four categories of spoken content exchanged socially. A stroke needs to be easily passable to others, entertaining or/and educational. 

4 categories of strokes:

STORIES based on facts, not known to many but interesting

JOKES without offence, respecting cultures and personalities

RIDDLES worth promoting, developing logic or any other mental skills

DISCOVERIES meaningful to many, be it impressive findings or personal explorations

 

FINDINGS
Classic bias in education: violation of balance in teachers’ (and, as a result, students;) focus on the four educational domains The psychomotor and cognitive domains prove tto be prioritised over the axiological and affecttive domains. In other words, the questions ‘What do we DO WITH language(s)?’ and ‘How do we UNDERSTAND the world THROUGH language(s)?’ remain consistently dominant over the questions ‘What do we THINK OF language(s)?’ and – partculatly – ‘How do we FEEL ABOUT language(s)?’. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need for a shift in such a biased orientation.