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Role of the European Commission
“The European Union will soon be home to over 450 million people from diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It will be more important than ever that citizens have the skills necessary to understand and communicate with their neighbours.
The European Union is built around the free movement of its citizens, capital and services. The citizen with good language skills is better able to take advantage of the freedom to work or study in another Member State.
Promoting linguistic diversity means actively encouraging the teaching and learning of the widest possible range of languages ... The imminent enlargement of the European Union will bring with it a wealth of languages from several language families ... .
Member States agree that pupils in secondary education should master at least two foreign languages, with the emphasis on effective communicative ability: active skills rather than passive knowledge. ‘Native speaker’ fluency is not the objective, but appropriate levels of skill in reading, listening, writing and speaking in two foreign languages are required, together with intercultural competencies and the ability to learn languages whether with a teacher or
alone.
Language learning is for everybody. Only a very small minority of people has physical, mental or other characteristics that make language learning impossible.
Promoting linguistic diversity means actively encouraging the teaching and learning of the widest possible range of languages in our schools, universities, adult education centres and enterprises. Taken as a whole, the range on offer should include the smaller European languages as well as all the larger
ones, regional, minority and migrant languages as well as those with ‘national’ status, and the languages of our major trading partners throughout the world. The imminent enlargement of the European Union will bring with it a wealth of languages from several language families; it requires a special effort to ensure that the languages of the new Member States become more widely learned in other countries. Member States have considerable scope to take a lead in promoting the teaching and learning of a wider range of languages than at present.
It is essential to improve the take-up of language learning opportunities by continuous activities to raise awareness of the benefits of language learning, and by bringing language resources closer to the people who need them.”
From: The European Commission's Action Plan for Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity
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The Stella Project was supported and co-funded by the European Commission as part of the Socrates Minerva programme. The aim was to deliver high-quality online language learning courses for Less Widely Taught and Used Languages within the European Union.
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. More information about the methodology can be found at our Wiki page.
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