| Workshop at the AEBR General Assembly and Annual Conference, Gent November 2009 |
| At the end of a long first conference day, a group of interested participants informally gathered to talk about the situation of languages in border regions. The representatives of various border regions agreed that competences in the neighbour language are becoming increasingly important because of the closer cooperation in these regions. The cooperation with neighbours also extends to other professional fields. In the health care sector for example, cooperation is growing. This requires perfect communication in rather specialised and scientific matters. Most of the participants notice that the English language is well on its way to becoming the main foreign language in school. Competences in neighbour languages are decreasing! It is quite difficult to motivate young children to learn the neighbour language. Projects that focus on very young children learning the neighbour language should be promoted. Projects that offer learning the language of your neighbour through actual personal contact appear to be very effective too. In a number of regions we see that projects are initiated that encourage learning the neighbour language. Even the less widely used languages such as Dutch and Czech are learned. The participants of this workshop think the initiative of the Border Regions (AEBR) in cooperation with the Languages and Border Network (Language Academy) to set up a platform for neighbour languages is a very good one. They also indicated that they would like to stay informed on the progress. |
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