PARTICIPATION IN THE NORDIC-BALTIC SOCRATES PROJECT

Diana Rumpite, assistant professor
Latvian Association of Language Teachers (LALT)
lvasa@latnet.lv

In May, 2003 at the meeting in Stockholm the participants of the Nordic-Baltic SOCRATES networking project discussed the results of the whole project, as well as individual networking groups.

The basic conclusion was that it is important to continue an expand the collaboration of the language teachers of the region.

But how did it start? And what did it focus on?

It is always valuable and rewarding to exchange views and to enrich ourselves both professionally and crossculturally. The Nordic-Baltic seminar organized by SUKOL (www.sukol.fi)  (the Finnish association of all the language teachers) in Tallinn, Estonia , June 26 – 29 gave a perfect opportunity to systematize, generalize and reflect on the most recent developments and findings in language teaching/learning in Europe and the world. The seminar was perfectly organized by our Finnish colleagues, it had a very good timing and had been very well thought over. It was also the beginning of the Socrates project involving the language teachers of the FIPLV Nordic-Baltic region.

We really appreciated the chance of sharing experience about such most topical issues as Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, European Language Portfolio, effective use of IT, etc. which were considered from different facets. 

We appreciated and were immensely pleased about the sponsorship from the Nordic Council of Ministers arranged by SUKOL also  for the 10 delegates from Latvia to attend the seminar.

 We are most thankful to the President of SUKOL Leena Hamalainen, as well as Paivi Koivistoinen-Toivonen for the absolutely perfect organization of this seminar, for their efforts and long hours spent on working on the agenda issues, sponsorship problems and other countless things to make this seminar a real success!

In October, 2002 the coordinators of the individual  umbrella associations in the Nordic-Baltic networking project  met in Helsinki to discuss the most efficient ways of organizing the research.

 FIPLV Vice-President Tuula Penttila (Finland) informed us in greater detail about the FIPLV World Congress in July, 2003 (www.fiplv.org ).

 The five basic areas of the research were:

1.     The Common European Framework
2.     The Language Portfolio
3.     Creativity in Language Teaching/Learning
4.     Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Language Teaching/Learning
5.     Increasing Motivation for the Second and Third Language Studies

The networking besides face-to-face meetings, included online collaboration by means of specially created virtual Discussion Forums and also sending e-mails. The results were most useful and beneficial!