Sabine Brachmann-Bosse
What impact could the project have on the future work of Goethe institut es all over the world?
For me, “Your Language Counts!” has shown how closely language learning processes and linguistic diversity are linked to school integration and educational equity. In many European countries, classes are becoming increasingly heterogeneous and multilingual. If we at the Goethe-Institut take this reality seriously in the context of promoting German in national education systems, we can realign our work in language education toward an understanding of multilingualism as a resource—including for German language teaching.
The project has enabled us to see and appreciate learners with their own personal linguistic repertoire – this strengthens their identity and motivation to learn. In addition, there is the practical aspect of networking between teachers of heritage languages across national borders, learning from each other, and the exchange between European actors, which also makes this project so valuable for the Goethe-Institut.
What has to be done to further promote HLE?
It is clear that heritage languages need more visibility, more structure, and more recognition. Many teachers still work too much on the margins of the system. They need networking, professionalization, and firm integration into schools.
At the same time, we need political decision-makers who are brave enough to say, “Multilingualism is part of a good education.” One of the most effective project results is that we have created resources that can be directly reused – an evaluation report, a platform for teachers, an education policy roadmap, and a practice-oriented handbook. These tools ensure that the work can continue long after the project has ended and that others can build directly on our experiences. Now we need national partners to take up the baton and continue the European exchange on individual aspects and issues of multilingualism in practice.
Is there anything else you would like to add regarding the project?
I found the human encounters during the two years of the project particularly impressive: native language teachers who felt professionally valued and taken seriously for the first time, and students who, for example, realized through a letter exchange that their migration stories resonated with each other across national borders.
A key added value of the project was the European, multi-perspective collaboration. The different education systems, political frameworks, and social understandings of multilingualism in Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece forced us to question our own assumptions and think of new solutions. It was precisely this diversity of perspectives that enhanced the quality of the results: findings could be compared, important parallels could be identified, and good examples could be transferred to new contexts. Without this collaborative European consortium, many of these insights would not have been possible.
For me, “Your Language Counts!” has shown how closely language learning processes and linguistic diversity are linked to school integration and educational equity. In many European countries, classes are becoming increasingly heterogeneous and multilingual. If we at the Goethe-Institut take this reality seriously in the context of promoting German in national education systems, we can realign our work in language education toward an understanding of multilingualism as a resource—including for German language teaching.
The project has enabled us to see and appreciate learners with their own personal linguistic repertoire – this strengthens their identity and motivation to learn. In addition, there is the practical aspect of networking between teachers of heritage languages across national borders, learning from each other, and the exchange between European actors, which also makes this project so valuable for the Goethe-Institut.
What has to be done to further promote HLE?
It is clear that heritage languages need more visibility, more structure, and more recognition. Many teachers still work too much on the margins of the system. They need networking, professionalization, and firm integration into schools.
At the same time, we need political decision-makers who are brave enough to say, “Multilingualism is part of a good education.” One of the most effective project results is that we have created resources that can be directly reused – an evaluation report, a platform for teachers, an education policy roadmap, and a practice-oriented handbook. These tools ensure that the work can continue long after the project has ended and that others can build directly on our experiences. Now we need national partners to take up the baton and continue the European exchange on individual aspects and issues of multilingualism in practice.
Is there anything else you would like to add regarding the project?
I found the human encounters during the two years of the project particularly impressive: native language teachers who felt professionally valued and taken seriously for the first time, and students who, for example, realized through a letter exchange that their migration stories resonated with each other across national borders.
A key added value of the project was the European, multi-perspective collaboration. The different education systems, political frameworks, and social understandings of multilingualism in Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece forced us to question our own assumptions and think of new solutions. It was precisely this diversity of perspectives that enhanced the quality of the results: findings could be compared, important parallels could be identified, and good examples could be transferred to new contexts. Without this collaborative European consortium, many of these insights would not have been possible.