Education, culture, youth and sport
#TheFutureIsYours Education, culture, youth and sport in Europe
The EU needs improved language learning
Europeans do not communicate with each other easily, as they lack foreign-language skills. Few can follow radio or TV programs, let alone participate in discussions, in another language. This is a huge obstacle to a sense of community among Europeans. The EU needs to radically improve language learning.
Citizens call on the EU to disseminate the results of an innovative Erasmus+ program which has proved successful in a number of primary schools in 3 EU countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia) in 2018 and 2019. The “Multilingual Accelerator” (https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/content/multilingual-accelerator-now-you-have-opportunity-accelerate-language-learning-your-students) program showed a significant and rapid improvement in foreign-language skills of schoolchildren aged 8 to 9, who acquired these skills by first learning a limited and carefully-chosen amount of a logical living language, Esperanto. Their sense of achievement enabled these children to subsequently learn other languages more successfully and rapidly. Their teachers, who had no previous knowledge of the language, only needed a one-week course to enable them to teach the program.
Citizens call on the EU to encourage the Ministries of Education of all 27 EU-countries to reproduce this school program, under professional pedagogical supervision, and on a larger scale, to test the effectiveness of this innovative approach, which has the potential to revolutionize language learning throughout the EU 27.
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