STELLA Online Language Courses.

The Stella Project was supported and co-funded by the European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

. The aim was to deliver high-quality and pedagogically sound online language learning courses for Less Widely Taught and Used Languages within the European Union.
STELLA courses are claimed to be ideal for students, tourists and business people. They allegedly offer a number of unique benefits. They incorporate the Council of Europe’s syllabus (Breakthrough, Level A1). They guide students towards a European Language Certificate. They are designed specifically for the internet. Students can study in their native language. In addition, the STELLA software allows further courses to be created easily and efficiently for other languages.

The project is now complete with Danish, Hungarian and English courses available online.

Background

Article 149 of the EU Treaty states that the role of the EU is to “contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action.”


The European Commission recognizes that Member States are in charge of their education and training systems. However, the European Commission has a supporting, fostering role.

Over-arching EU policy goal

According to the Lisbon Strategy (March 2000), the over-arching EU policy goal is that “The Union must become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based
economy in the world.”
In the 2005 relaunch, the goal was stated as follows: The EU is to become “an advanced knowledge society with sustainable development, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.”
The EU works towards these policy goals on the one hand through policy work with Member States and on the other through subsidizing educational programmes.

The key challenge for the EU is to achieve multilingualism. As Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...

 (1993) stated, “we must place our hope in a polyglot

Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...

 Europe” . Multilingualism

Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...

 is a core value in Europe: it
is one of its unique qualities and contributes to its richness. However, learning a lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

 such as English is not enough. Every European citizen should speak their mother tongue and at least two other European languages.

The European Union's language objectives

To achieve this aim and meet this challenge the EU’s policy objectives are to promote language learning and linguistic diversity within Europe and to complement specific EU programmes by addressing language teaching and learning needs at every stage of a person’s life.

These objectives and needs will be met by

• developing materials for teaching less widely spoken and taught languages,

• building up competence in languages which in turn can reinforce European global competitiveness

• developing methods to motivate language learners

• promoting multilingual comprehension between languages.

The programmes

The EU initiative that funded transnational educational programmes was the Socrates programme

Socrates programme

The SOCRATES programme was an educational initiative of the European Commission; 31 countries took part. The initial Socrates programme ran from 1994 until 31 December 1999 when it was replaced by the Socrates II programme on 24 January 2000, which ran until 2006...

. This was replaced in 2007 by the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013. Within the Socrates programme the Lingua Action supported projects that promoted language learning while the Minerva Action promoted innovation in the fields of ICT and education.

Methodology

Underlying the whole project is the STELLA methodology, which implements the ideas and objectives laid down in the Common European Framework of Reference for Modern Languages. The methodology is oriented towards the European Language Certificates, levels A1/A2. Supporting documents include a graded and sequenced distribution of topics, themes, language functions, lexis and syntax which authors can use as a basis to generate online language learning material. The generic system constitutes the electronic implementation of the STELLA methodology. The core material in STELLA is a language learning course (written in English), which serves as a model for authors to write courses for other languages.

Solid foundations

STELLA is built on strong pedagogical and technological foundations. It is well-designed, integrating reading, writing, listening as well as speaking skills, practised with a wide range of exercises, all of which can be corrected with the help of a self-check program. It also provides information on grammar and introduces the culture of the target language. It appears to fill a niche and present a potential model for other language teaching programmes, in line with possible future developments in education (e.g. increasing the popularity of distance study programmes or home teaching through the internet on various levels). Stella offers an exciting perspective in which technological know-how and development is integrated into the experience of learning and teaching, offering a new scale and type of experience in these areas.

Stella courses

The STELLA courses are suitable for:

• Learners who want to work towards a recognized European Language Certificate which they can add to their language portfolio.

• Learners who want to visit a country and want to learn a few basics of the language.

• Learners who wish to study online in their own time and at their own pace.

• Learners who cannot take part in regular classroom activities because they live in a remote area or because of a disability.

• Language schools and colleges which want to integrate an online e-course to support their classroom teaching. Stella e-courses can complement other learning courses as they follows an established syllabus.

External links

STELLA: www.eulanguages.net

GrammarExplorer: www.grammarexplorer.eu

• http://www.ezlanguagecourses.com/