Національний Темпус / Еразмус+ 
офіс в Україні

INTRODUCING THE PROJECT IDEA

How to unify different people: TEaching SEcond LAnguages as linguas francas

Shift of different populations within Europe due to social, cultural, commercial, educational and political reasons has ‘modified’ Europe’s state borders and has inevitably caused language contact. As a result, most European countries have lost their purely national character in terms of their ethnic synthesis and societal structure. At the same time, certain countries serve as focal points due to their political, geographical, cultural or economic status and their national languages become the ‘linguas francas’ of the wider areas. Aim of our project is to design specialized programs regarding the teaching of these linguas francas in order to train instructors of second languages. We argue that, although languages differ at various structural aspects (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), language teaching is driven by specific principles and certain strategies which can be applied universally irrespective of the structural properties of the target language. Therefore, second language teaching may be completed faster and more effectively. This is a new way of seeing language teaching not from the point of view of linguistics but from the point of view of language teaching, language testing and education, in general.

The above mentioned action is envisaged to be funded by the Tempus programme/Joint Projects (JPs).

THE UNIVERSITY OF CRETE

The University of Crete was established in 1973. It is a dynamic educational and research institution with a growing national and international reputation for its innovative approaches to a wide range of academic disciplines and research fields, including humanities, social sciences, science, a highly respectable Medical School, and a number of affiliated research institutes and centers. The University has a student body of over 12500 undergraduate students and 2500 graduate and postgraduate students.

A significant part of the University’s mission is interaction with the community, economy and culture of Crete, and this has been promoted in part by the national and international recognition achieved through the scientific and technological accomplishments of the University in collaboration with the Foundation for Research and Technology (ITE).

Website: www.uoc.gr

COORDINATOR

Marina Tzakosta, Assistant Professor of Language Development and Pedagogics of the Preschool Child, Ph.D. in Theoretical Linguistics

Research interests: Typical and a-typical language development, Learning and teaching of the second language

Website: www.marinatzakosta.gr

E-mail address: martzak74@gmail.com, martzak@edc.uoc.gr

CONTACT PERSON

Ms Eleftheria Alefandinou

E-mail address: alefandinou@admin.uoc.gr, alefandinou@yahoo.gr