Catalonia’s linguistic immersion programme
By Catalonia on Jan 23, 2008 with Comments 9
The first phase of Catalonia’s linguistic immersion programme will start on february 6th and will see the best part of 80,000 immigrants learning Catalan until the year 2013. These will be mainly infant and primary school children.
This first phase will see 84 schools participating – the majority being in Barcelona with 425 teachers taking part. The Generalitat would like to see as a final objective around 500 schools and around 3,000 teachers taking part in this programme.
barcelonaNo related posts.
Filed Under: News • Spanish Education System • Spanish Headlines • The Catalans
About the Author:
There’s a fair amount of research that shows that if a language isn’t learned by age 6 or so, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve native speaker levels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language
Many of our friends’ kids speak only Catalan at home, all their friends are Catalan, and school is in Catalan. Sure, they see movies in Castillian, but learning a language is more difficult than just passively watching media. I grew up in a bilingual home and real fluency is definitely something that requires lots of hard work.
This is also what I’ve observed at my workplace. Younger local workers are pretty fluent in Castillian, but their Castillian definitely falls into the L2 category.
cheers, I’ll drink to that with a nice bottle of Protoss
Dears, dears, dears,
I daresay it is not very prudent for native English speakers to make derogatory comments about foreign language skills. Centuries of colonial history, the existing commonwealth of nations and the oh so global lifestyle of many a hip citizen in the UK … and still ridiculously few of us have a decent command of any foreign language. British real-estate conquerors in France -those were days- felt proud of having picked enough French for local shopping, after twenty years. Latin, French, English … will Chinese teach us modesty?
As for English in Catalonia, yes it is pathetic. As for the normalització lingüística policy (based on linguistic immersion) in Catalonia, the author should know that it has been around for more than two decades. The programme starting shortly is merely a specific action plan for immigrant pupils. Should the author wish to criticise this policy as such -in Catalonia and elsewhere- it would be fair to have British teachers fresh up their Urdu, Bengali or Polish asap.
It is also interesting to read the comments regarding the allegedly poor command of Castilian that Catalan pupils are said to boast. After 10 years of touring Catalan cities and villages alike I have not spent a single without speaking or hearing Castilian. I no passa res, I wish I could say the same for Catalan, English and French! The comment somehow reminds me of that former Spanish minister of education who felt sorry for the children of Catalonia having less brain space available due to Catalan taking up so much already.
And now, let us all have a glass of wine to forget about posting responses on a Sunday afternoon.
The quality of English education in Spain is pathetic. The Generalitat doesn’t really help the issue by forcing all English teachers in the public system to have their Catalan certification. The end result is that native English speaking teachers are few and far between.
In theory, Catalan speakers should have it slightly easier when learning English (having mastered more vowels).
well done marina, tom clarke sounds like an ignorant fool with no ability to infer beyond the scope of his own voicebox. okay in many ways i do believe the situation in spain could be better if a union of some form were reached mainly for prevalence of peace however in terms of language and identity, each and every group of people have the right to determine how to be represented and thats that. period. it does however strike me as peculiar though when dumb people like tom expect the whole world to achieve a standard of clarity in expressing themselves in english which is clearly alien language to their home dialects. i think that this dream of his is firmly rooted in a lack of interest in thoroughly learning anything else new but his way and a sign of a group of people way too pig headed and not up to date with the times
First of all Clarke, how do you dare to compare Catalonia’s policy with Franco’s dictatorship? My grandfather was in a franquist concentration camp just for defending the rights of its nation, so please, a bit more of sensitivity on that respect. Franco executed a lot of people just to impose his “order” af a unite Spain. How can you even do such a comparison! I would recomend you to read a bit of spanish history before saying such comments.
Second: so only widespoken languages have the right to be learnt and have a normal use in a social, educational and professional environment? So should we just forget and eliminate the rest of languages just because are spoken by a smaller amount of people? I know catalan it’s not as widespread as spanish in the world, as many more langauges fortunately! So these languages dont have the right to exist and be learnt? What a colonialist point of view is that! (By the way, catalan it’s not only spoken in Catalonia, and is it actually more spoken than other official european languages such as dutch, danish, finish, maltese, and so on).
Three: are you really justifying people being nasty to spaniards in general because of our accent. I assume that you have a perfect spanish accent then! (of course i assume you even didn’t bother probably to learn a word of catalan even if living in Barcelona for 20 years!). The difference is that either in Catalonia or Spain, I doubt anyone would be nasty to you for having an english accent. And as I remarked I know that ONLY BAD-MANNERED IGNORANT PEOPLE do that.
So next time that you think an accent “hurts your ears”, please think about your own experiance as immigrant and try to be more simpathetic.
Believe me Marina there’s a lot more racism in Spain and Catalonia than in London. I think your experience is pretty isolated as Londoner’s are very tolerant of foreigners. Maybe the only thing that upsets them is a very strong Spanish accent which “hurts their ears” and butchers the English language. I say it might be your case as most Spaniards never really speak English with a nice accent and I personally can count on one hand the Spaniards I know who speak a decent level of English.It’s not surprising either when Spain is at the bottom of the education tables in europe regarding school failure.
I’m not against Catalonia trying to preserve their language but they are going about it in a rather ridiculous way. Read George Orwell’s “animal farm” and you’ll know what I mean. Catalonia is using the same tactics that Franco used to oppress the Catalan language.
Regarding your point about “We ara happy to learn other languages” I find it also ridiculous that a region like Catalonia treats Castellano as a foreign language – I mean what the hell is going on? A lot of the children I’ve spoken to at primary school and 1º de E.S.O level would have FAILED their Castellano exams 20 years ago.That doesn’t prove to be a very progressive culture, does it? 2 hours of Castellano a week in most primary schools in Catalonia is ridiculous.Catalonia should wake up and teach more Castellano. The Catalan language is only useful in Catalonia – nowhere else.
Maybe one day when Catalonia wakes up and stops idiots like Carod Rovira from spending good public money on opening consulates in third world countries and giving donations of 1 Million euros to South Americans so that they can learn Catalan then maybe the rest of the world will take you lot seriously. Spain is in a deep recession with nearly 20% unemployment and the sooner it gets its arse into gear, the better.
Born in Barcelona moved to North London 5 years ago. I think London is a nice place to live except when some uneducated people say nasty racist comments because of your accent. Also lived in Copenhagen, Dublin and Singapore. As you see I have been living in countries with a very varied cultural background, and different languages. And every time I move to a different country I try to adapt to their cultural and linguistic reality, I don’t pretend people from that country to adapt to me….What is your rationale for saying “education issues here in the region of Catalonia such as the linguistic mobbing that goes”? Linguistic mobbing??? Just becuase we try to preserve our language in an environment of growing immigration comming to live in Catalonia? We have always been tolerant with everyone coming, and accept the different cultural realities. The only thing we would like to see is willingness to adapt to our culture too. That actually would be very much appreciated. We ara happy to learn other languages, but first of all we want the right to be able to study, work and live with our own language too. I think it’s a very understandable request.
It’s not enough…