PPLI Annual Report 2020 - Flipbook - Page 90
Disseminate examples of good practice at all levels of the education and training
system (3.A.6)
Action Progress
Small grants were offered to Foreign Languages departments in the universities to support activities that
would contribute to the awareness-raising campaign. Funding was provided in order to highlight the
importance of foreign languages and of taking a foreign language at third level and to assist the HEIs with
promoting available foreign language courses in the universities, both for cultural and social awareness and
for career opportunities, based on languages themselves or in combination with other disciplines. Covid
restrictions limited the capacity of universities to use this funding in 2020 but nonetheless some excellent
progress was reported.
Impact
•
Trinity College Dublin: School of Languages Literatures and Cultural Studies (SLLCS) held an Interactive
Open Day and a Transition Year Language competition, which had 80 entries. The interactive open day
consisted of interactive workshops and presentations which showcased the importance of studying
languages, career possibilities for graduates, the Trinity student experience including time abroad, and
graduate attributes
•
University College Cork School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures developed a new Higher Diploma
in Global Software Sales, Support, and Localisation with other partners and expect to attract 40 students
in the next academic year. It was open to graduates of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean,
Portuguese and Spanish. Some funding was used to promote the programme, attract recruits, and put in
place the module content for university approval.
•
University College Cork, Department of Italian advanced a number of important initiatives for the
promotion and dissemination of Italian language and culture in the Cork area, including a ‘Promotion of
Italian in Schools’ web page https://www.ucc.ie/en/italian/promotionofitalian/; and a TY event with 38 TY
students from six Cork-area secondary schools which included a UCC campus tour, Christmas carol
singing in Italian, a short, interactive language lesson, traditional Italian foods (lunch), cultural awareness
of Italian Christmas customs, and Tombola (Italian Bingo, with prizes). The creation of resources for
teaching Italian in both primary and post-primary schools in the Cork area has been part of ‘The Italian
Wave’ Programme which will provide Italian classes in these schools.
•
University College Dublin, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics were able to significantly
increase the number of registrations on a 1-day online languages summer school, with 285 post-primary
students registered and 130 students in attendance at its peak. The Living Multilingually project was also
developed (mini-videos, podcast series, interactive online games, and a student portfolio). The
UCDictionary, a crowd-sourced multilingual dictionary of words and phrases that will enrich the linguistic
landscape of UCD provided an opportunity to raise awareness of multilingualism on campus.
•
NUI Galway, School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures (Italian Studies) put together a language
programme that would involve students emotionally through dance, performance and mime. The
approach involved comparing Irish and Italian traditional dance moves to facilitate the acquisition of
vocabulary related to movement, space, body parts, emotions and so on. Prior to Covid restrictions this
was brought into schools and later made into a website where instructions were provided on how to
replicate the sessions.
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