EFIL is a member of the EU Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism. On 17t October the Platform met and discussed the latest development in the field of Multilingualism. Within the Platform, EFIL participates in the works of the group Language & Education which aims at writing policy recommendations on language learning.
Regarding policy developments, the Council conclusions on Conclusions on multilingualism and the development of language competences have bene published in May and no benchmark on language learning was set due to difficult negotiations among Member states.
Also, following the restructuring of the Commission, the Skills portfolio to which Multilingualism has so far belonged, passes from DG Education and Culture to DG Employment, however Multilingualism stays with the DG Education and Culture. This means that Multilingualism will no longer be linked to skills, which might allow more contacts with education and youth stakeholders.
Due to the restructuring, Multilingualism policy of the EU has also a new website: http://ec.europa.eu/languages/index_en.htm
Important practical news in the field of Multilingualism in Europe is that as from 1st October 2014 the European Commission offers the online linguistic support for Erasmus+ for mobilities up to 2 months, in 6 languages: English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German and will be gradually extended to the all other languages and types of mobilities. The online linguistic support consists in an assessment beefier and after the mobility (mandatory) and in case the individual needs a crash course, s/he will be offered this. The language assessment is done after selection, though it is not a certification, just a quick diagnostic. This new tool will allow to gather a great amount of data on the impact of mobility on language learning.
Interesting websites:
– project lingvo.info: there is a list of all language courses online for free
– European Centre of Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (Austria) http://www.ecml.at/
For more: elisa.briga@afs.org
