CercleS – News


On this site you will find the latest news that we would like to communicate to our members. For details about projects with CercleS involvement please see below. Please also refer to the events and the elections pages.

12th CercleS Conference 2012
 6 - 8 September 2012, London, UK.
 http://www2.lse.ac.uk/language/CercleS2012/Cercles2012.aspx

IV CercleS Seminar: Five Years of Bologna: Upgrading or Downsizing Multilingualism?
26-28 April 2012, Braga, Portugal
First Call for Papers PDF
Please note that the deadline for submissions for the forthcoming IV CercleS seminar HAS BEEN EXTENDED UNTIL 31st January 2012
The direct link for the seminar site is
http://www.iscap.pt/cml/recles/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128&Itemid=141

 

CercleS Seminar: Ten years of the CEFR and the ELP. The central role of the learner in using the CEFR and the ELP.
24-26 November 2011 in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Ten years ago, in 2001, the European Year of Languages was celebrated with much success in 45 different countries. In that memorable year, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) was launched, together with its complement the European Language Portfolio (ELP).
This means that 2011 is a historically and internationally significant year for the European language learning and teaching community: a year in which we can look back on the use and the impact of the CEFR and the ELP. It is also a time when we can look forward to new challenges and opportunities.
We are therefore extremely proud to invite you to this seminar organized to celebrate the triple anniversary of the European Year of Languages, the CEFR and the ELP.
Find out more about the seminar in the attached documents.
Additional information will be published in May on the websites: http://lcconference.webhosting.rug.nl/ and www.cercles.org
PDF
 Please note that the deadline for submissions for the CercleS CEFR and ELP seminar: " The central role of the learner in using the CEFR and the ELP " HAS BEEN EXTENDED UNTIL  12th AUGUST 2011.
 http://lcconference.webhosting.rug.nl/

 

11th CercleS Conference
2 - 4 September 2010, Helsinki, Finland.

The 11th CercleS conference took place in 2010 and was  hosted by the University of Helsinki Language Centre, Finland from 2nd to 4th September 2010.
You can now find all the updated material of the conference at the following links:
CercleS 2010 Plenary Lectures
http://www.congrex.fi/cercles2010/plenaries.htm
CercleS 2010 Poster Gallery
 http://picasaweb.google.com/105209211414431676072/CercleS2010Posters?feat=directlink#
CercleS 2010 Photo Gallery
 http://picasaweb.google.com/105209211414431676072/CercleS2010?feat=directlink#

 CercleS Focus Groups
The aim of the Focus Groups is to pull together the competences available within our individual institutions and by doing so:

It is hoped that the activities of these Focus Groups will lead to more workshops and seminars in various parts of Europe making CercleS more active and more visible.
 CercleS II Focus Group Meeting
 The II CercleS Focus Group meeting was organised by the University of Messina in Italy from 14-16 May 2010

 CercleS I Focus Group Meeting
 The I CercleS Focus Group meeting was organised by the University of Toulouse, France in November 2009.

 CercleS Seminar
17 - 19 September 2009
The CercleS Seminar entitled: “The role of the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) and the European Language Portfolio (ELP) in higher education” was organized by the University of Padua, Italy from the 17th to the 19th September 2009.The seminar aimed to give those involved in university language education in Europe the opportunity to share research, ideas and practical experiences regarding the impact and the applications of the CEFR and the ELP.

For more details and registration, visit the seminar website at: http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/cmsconv/

10th CercleS International Conference
The 10th CercleS International Conference, hosted by the Language Centre of the University of Seville, Spain, took place from 18 to 20 September 2008. Please visit the conference website for further information on the event.

Bulletin 28 is now available and has been posted to the members.

Bulletin 27 is now available and has been posted to the members. Amongst many other interesting topics, the issue includes articles on the Second Wulkow Meeting, CercleS Seminar in Padua, the 11th International CercleS Conference, the 6th ACLES Conference and the Centre for Business Languages at the Business School.

Bulletin 26 is now available and has been posted to the members. Amongst many other interesting topics, the issue includes articles on CercleS Focus Groups, the ELP workshops at the Seville at the Seville conference, the 11th International CercleS Conference Call for papers and the Wulkow Memorandum.

Bulletin 25 is now available and has been posted to the members. Amongst many other interesting topics, the issue includes articles on the forthcoming Plurilingual Conference in Seville, Impressions from the 10th Cercles International Conference and the Web CEF: On-line Collaboration and Oral Assessment within the Common European Framework of Reference.

Bulletin 24 is now available and has been posted to the members. Amongst many other interesting topics, the issue includes articles on the forthcoming 10th CercleS Conference in Seville, the AULC annual Conference and the Language Centre of the University of Perugia in Second Life. (September 2008)

The Proceedings from the 9th CercleS Conference, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany, 2006, edited by Thomas Vogel, Ray Satchell and Alžbeta Moravčíková, are now available at the price of 30 €. (September 2008)

The report on the CercleS ELP Translation Workshop, which took place at the University of Padua, Italy, in November 2007, is now available.

 

Projects

LETPP (http://www.letpp.eu/) - Languages in Europe Theory Policy Practice

A one year project - LETPP - has been initiated in order to identify the conditions which allow good ideas on multilingualism to develop into coherent policy and practice, and also the obstacles to that happening.  By policy we mean European, national and regional strategies which promote or inhibit linguistic diversity in social and economic life, and also specific measures which may support that diversity, such as the Lifelong Learning Programme.  The two major strands of LE TPP are languages for social cohesion (questions of identity, community and mutual understanding), and languages for intercultural communication (questions of commerce, employability, and international relations). Taken together these underpin the aspiration to create a viable, competitive and democratic society based on principles of diversity, inclusiveness and mutual respect.

The final document produced from the one year LETPP project – Languages in Europe, Theory, Policy & Practice – has now been published, and you can access it at http://www.languagescompany.com/resources.html as well as from the LETPP website

 

EXPLICS- Exploiting Internet Case Studies
The aim of the EXPLICS project is to improve language competence of students by preparing models of best-practice in how to exploit Internet case study and simulation templates and by familiarising language teachers with these models. This is achieved by bringing together the different competence areas of the project partners. These specialisations include: task-oriented and problem-based learning and teaching; use of global simulations; use of case studies in language teaching; development of language level descriptors and methods of language testing, use of ICT for corpus analysis and concordancing and the use of ICT for language testing. We will then develop interrelated activities for subject-specific language teaching.

 

PICTURE Project
CercleS was also involved in the PICTURE (Portfolio Intercultural Communication - Towards Using Real Experiences) project, which was initiated in November 2004, and ran for approximately three years. This project was supported by SOCRATES and coordinated by Cor Koster. It had two aims: first, to develop a language teaching module on aspects of intercultural communication; second, to produce a questionnaire that could be used by students to carry out interviews with foreign language speakers.

 

Lingu@net Europa PLUS: Expanding the virtual languages resource centre
Lingu@net Europa PLUS project builds on Lingu@net Europa, the virtual languages resource centre (www.linguanet-europa.org) developped with Socrates / Leonardo support (1998-2001), and is coordinated by CILT. The objectives of Lingu@net Europa PLUS are: first, to make it easier for adult learners throughout the EU to gain access to relevant, good quality on-line language learning resources; second, to open Lingu@net Europa up to thousands of new users by adding 11 new access languages.

 

LATE Project
The LATE (Language Audits - Tools for Europe) project, which was initiated in November 2001 and ran for approximately three years, ended in June 2004. The participants in this project were 16 organisations in seven countries. CercleS' task, as a partner, was to monitor and evaluate the products and to ensure compliance with quality objectives. The project has recently led to two publications, as reported on in Bulletin 18, pp.8-9.

 

ENLU- Creating A New European Network
ENLU is one of seven projects selected in the frame of the European Commission’s Call for proposals EAC/45/03, issued in preparation of the Action Plan Promoting language learning and linguistic diversity.The main objective of the two-year project is to create a trans-European network of higher education institutions and other stakeholder organisations with a view to achieving a breakthrough in the area of “languages for all”. The project is carried out under the auspices of the Conseil Européen pour les Langues / European Language Council (CEL/ELC), which has been engaged in language policy development and in European projects since it was founded in 1997. The project represents a response to the linguistic and cultural challenges posed by thecreation of a European higher education area and a European research area and by the Lisbon Strategy.

 

 

Partners news

Call for submissions for the ECML programme of activities 2012-2015. 
For further information please visit the ECML website http://call.ecml.at/ 
CercleS members are invited to consider submitting a project proposal (teams) or a tender (individual experts).
ECML Call for Submisions.pdf

 

Synergies Europe 
Please click here for all the information regarding the call for papers for a special issue of “Synergies Europe”, on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).