DIM PROJECT

Project description

C.P.I.A. Avellino is the leading school of the DiM Project in collaboration with partners from several European countries, active in the field of migration. Additionally, all the schools and institutions involved in the project operate in the teaching of L2 to foreign students. Most of them are immigrants from African and Asian countries, facing many problems such as low literacy or illiteracy.  They often live in very disadvantaged economic and social conditions. Many are young people who escaped from their villages of origin without any knowledge of the civil and social rules of the host country. Some speak only their own mother tongue which is often a dialect that only a few can understand, using a mixture of languages and dialects as a vehicular language. Many of them leave school before obtaining any certification.

DiM Project was born from the awareness that these foreign students are an inexhaustible source of linguistic and cultural wealth. They need innovative teaching methods and tools to encourage and motivate them, to make them feel part of the culture of the country in which they live and, at the same time, proud about their native culture.

The project consists of a Multilingual Online Dictionary (DiM) elaborated and experimented by project partners. The main idea behind the project is that the students, as native speakers of their languages, collaborate actively on the realisation of the dictionary and promote the knowledge of their cultures trough their languages.

Objectives

• to spread out a good practice related to making a multilingual dictionary

• to support the process of teaching and learning a second foreign language

• to improve student’s learning skills in second language

• to encourage the active participation of students

• to promote an intercultural dialogue between different cultures

• to promote school, linguistic and social inclusion for a full integration of foreign immigrant students

• to create a free and open multilingual online dictionary that will be the basis for further activities to be implemented later, such as, for example, a multicultural online library (intellectual output)

Target group

The target group to which our project is addressed are all foreign students and also the teachers of the various courses of the C.P.I.A.s or of other schools or organizations that teach in L2 language courses or in other courses reserved for foreigners. Our intent is to extend our project to other institutions working in the field of adult immigrant education to increase the number of languages and dictionary users and to create a network for the exchange of information on linguistic and cultural data of the countries of origin of our students. This data will form later the basis for other products related to the dictionary, such as the creation of a multicultural library online.

News

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