euskalkultura.eus

Mallorca, Spain.  HABE, as part of its Euskara Munduan program, called another annual meeting of Basque teachers in European Basque clubs.  The event took place on October 17-20 in Mallorca, organized with the collaboration of the local Artea Euskal Etxea.

The meeting gathered teachers with various backgrounds, some with experience, and other new; some from Basque clubs with many students and other with smaller groups.  It was all very enriching for the participants allowing them to share experiences and to learn from each other.

“It is about supporting the new teachers, and taking advantage of all the guidelines, material and ideas for a course.  It is especially useful for the new teachers to see how it works in other Basque clubs,” Kinku Zinkunegi of HABE explained to EuskalKultura.com.

The meeting addresses issues proposed by the teachers themselves, the majority related to the challenges and questions that arise daily in class.  This year, some of the issues discusses included, for example, how to manage groups with students of different levels, or how to go from grammar to conversation.

This semester, action!

The last issue was a proposal to move to conversation more easily by supporting the creation of short films in Basque, and holding contests in each Basque club.  In that way, class becomes more dynamic, and provides the students motivation, as well as a tool to treat some of the material that they have learned in class in a more practical and fun way.  During the meeting both the technical and the didactic sides of the proposal were addressed.

The idea stems from the success enjoyed by the Contest of Basque Shorts held at the Barcelona Basque club that was also implemented successfully last year at the Madrid club.  The challenge is now to translate those successes to other European Basque clubs.

Thanks to Artea

Organizers and participants were very grateful to the hosting club, the Artea Euskal Etxea.

“We want to stress the good attitude and generosity of the club representatives.  They gave us free reign of their clubhouse, and have helped us enormously during the time that we were there.  To conclude the meeting they even organized an excursion for us on the last day.  A very sincere, Eskerrik Asko, to the members of the Artea Euskal Etxea,” concluded Zinkunegi.