Language Clubs

Language Clubs

The use of international gestures as an interlinguistic and intercultural instrument opens up the possibility of building several language clubs in the same educational center.

Students (as well as teachers and parents) who are interested in a particular language and culture can create a club in which they share their common interest.

If several schools undertake to carry out a joint project, their respective language clubs will be able to build a network of mutual knowledge.

All language clubs in this network would have the opportunity to contact a "reciprocity club", whose members would be both teachers and students of their respective languages.

For example (see figure)

A Club 1 (from Language A in a country where Language B is spoken ) would be reciprocal to a Club 2 (from language B in a country where language A is spoken ).

Students fromClub 1 would be teachers of their own language B for the students at Club 2. These, at the same time, would be teachers of language A for their colleagues at Club 1.

As a result, everyone has the best teachers of the chosen language. At the same time, the fact that they all use the same signs and in the same lessons helps mutual understanding.

Language lessons are designed to be useful for dialogue between members of the same club, and the signs can add a plus of communication so that the interactions are meaningful:

• Lesson 1 (greetings and displacements),

• Lesson 2 (buying and selling),

• Lesson 3 (presentation),

• Lesson 4 (hobbies),

• Lesson 5 (storytelling) e

• Lesson 6 (reviews)

During these years there have been several language clubs at IES Pedra da Agua in Ponteareas, Galicia, sometimes in collaboration with UNESCO schools in the countries where the chosen languages are spoken.

Wolof Club

Founded in 1999, the students of this club realized several exchanges with students of the School d'Enseignement Moyen de Ndoffanne, in Kaolack, Senegal. Personal letters were sent with information about themselves, as well as a videotape where various phrases and questions were recorded in Wolof language and with international gestures. After several months (the Internet was still not a dream at the moment), answers were received, in the form of letters and texts with information about the country of Senegal, its history and its language.

Japanese Club

The following year (2000), a second group of students from the same school formed a Japanese Club. They also did language activities, such as the ones seen in this video (which corresponds to the sentences in Lesson 2):

The Japanese Club carried out various activities during the following years, and in 2007 also began exchanging postcards and videos with students at Hagoromo Gakuen High School in Osaka, Japan, such as those that can be seen here after lesson 1, as well as in this other video

Video made outdoors to show classmates in Japan the Tea River, which passes near the school, as well as in this other video

Ellenika (Modern Greek) Club

In 2009 a third language club joined the previous ones: a club for the modern Greek language or Ellenika. They did similar activities to the others, as we can see in this video:

Turkish Club

In 2010, a fourth language club appeared at this school.

Members of this club were able to exchange videos with Lisesi Bursa Anadolu, in Bursa (Turkey). In the following video we can see how the students of the Turkish Club of the Galician school introduce themselves to their classmates from Turkey, inviting them to learn their respective languages together:

Students from Bursa, Turkey, sent several videos in which they showed students from Galicia how to say these sentences in Turkish.

You can watch a video HERE, as well as the following video (with captions in Turkish):

12 Language Clubs

In 2011, up to 12 different language clubs were set up at IES Pedra da Agua, all of them freely made up of students who wanted to get closer to a common country, its language and its culture.

In this video you can see some sentences made by students in these 12 languages, after finishing lesson 1

Redes de Clubes de idiomas

O uso sistemático de ensinanzas baseadas en xestos internacionais permite propoñer a creación dunha ou varias redes de Clubs da Lingua.

Os membros desta rede poderían crear clubs de idiomas para calquera das linguas presentes na rede, para que os membros destes clubs poidan contar coa axuda de estudantes dunha escola onde se falan estas linguas.

Os mellores resultados conséguense cando os clubs son recíprocos, como se explica ao principio.

You can also watch some videos that were made after lesson 1 by students from clubs in the following languages: German, Greek, Chinese, Swahili

The use of international gestures, working together in multilingual classrooms, allowed students to perform a new type of activity, where they interacted with other students of this center (and also with other students visiting European centers) in a Global Market, where they could buy and sell different products using only the languages they were beginning to learn