The ADAPT Centre was recently invited to provide a workshop on the AILO Linguistics Transition Year (TY) Module at the largest language teacher conference in Ireland on Saturday 14th October.
The event was hosted by Post-Primary Languages Ireland in collaboration with the Department of Education, Oide, COGG, Léargas, teacher and HEI colleagues as well as a diverse range of associated stakeholders. The Languages Connect Summit is a celebration of language teaching and learning and provides an opportunity for language teachers and stakeholders to collaborate with an expansive network of MFL representatives and learn new skills and strategies through diverse and innovative workshops. 1200 attendees attended the conference,
The linguistics module workshop was hands-on, with teachers trying out classroom activities and linguistics puzzles during the session.
The workshop was run by Dr Cara Greene from AILO (ADAPT, DCU) along with Wilma Slevin (Ashbourne Community School) and Dr Bettina Knipschild (Old Bawn Community School) who are long-time AILO teachers who developed some of the topics for the module. The module development, funded thanks to Post-Primary Languages Ireland.
Consisting of 10 topics, the module covers linguistics areas such as phonetics, writing systems, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and machine translation. The TY Linguistics Module offers a set of teacher resources for use in the classroom. Teachers can complete all the topics or focus on those more relevant to their context. Certificates are also available for schools that take part.
Each topic takes approximately two to three classes to complete and contains:
Schools can register for the module here (for updates, certificates etc.) and they can access the materials on the ppli.ie site as well as the ADAPT AILO site.
All schools are encouraged to register for the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) as the puzzles in the module link in. This year, registration closes on the 19th of January for secondary schools. There will be a preliminary round in schools at the end of January. One hundred students will be invited to the National Final in March with four students going on to represent Ireland at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Brasilia, Brazil in July 2024.
