Promoting Multilingualism: Mission Europe

Immerse yourself in the world of languages with three exciting Mission Europe adventures. Mission Berlin, Misja Kraków and Mission Paris offer an interesting approach to language learning in 26 episodes. You experience three missions from the perspective of a computer player who joins virtual heroines on adventures in France, Poland and Germany.

Many teachers are interested in finding innovative ways of teaching a language, particularly when it may be a language with which they are not familiar themselves. This of course, is an excellent reason for joining eTwinning as partner schools may be able to help each other, but even then, teachers will look for exciting projects to do which will help their pupils learn alongside each other. 

There are many websites which can help multilingualism but many hours could be spent exploring a website only to find it doesn’t suit the need of the teacher so the following website ‘review’ of Mission Europe not only gives some background to the site but also gives reasons and some possible ideas why and how a teacher may find the site useful to them within eTwinning partnerships.

Mission Europe (www.missioneurope.eu)

Website introduction 

Immerse yourself in the world of languages with three exciting Mission Europe adventures. Mission Berlin, Misja Kraków and Mission Paris offer an interesting approach to language learning in 26 episodes. You experience three missions from the perspective of a computer player who joins virtual heroines on adventures in France, Poland and Germany.

Background to Mission Europe:

This is an exciting ‘adventure’ (based on a historical event but then using a fictional ‘mission’) which uses, at the beginning, very basic ‘foreign’ language skills but completely in context, and it encourages pupils, in the first instance, to LISTEN and understand what is going on. The idea is similar to a ‘radio play’ where each (5 minute) episode (podcast) can be played to and listened by pupils and allows them to imagine themselves in the situation. 

Pupils can simply listen to every episode to follow the story, but each episode has clues to follow and the site also has interactive quizzes, opportunities to download posters, ‘wallpaper’ and ring tones so that students can immerse themselves in the story but at the same time, learn some vocabulary and phrases in their chosen language. There are also opportunities to learn about the culture of the country in question.

There are 3 languages/adventures to choose which are all different and can also give pupils an excellent introduction to all 3 languages if teachers wished. However, it may be easier to start with just choosing one language. Once pupils have completed one mission, they can continue with the others if they were interested. 

Using this in eTwinning

Although this site can just be used with a teacher and their class outside of any partnership, Mission Europe could form the basis of an excellent collaborative project within eTwinning.

In its simplest format, teachers in the partnership can decide:

• Which language they will choose (e.g., will it be a ‘new’ language for both partners?).
• Play one podcast a day (or every few days, remembering there are 26 episodes). 
• Introduce pupils to the TwinSpace and its Pupils' Corner, showing them the tools available. 
• Let the pupils (who could work in groups) come up with their own ideas on how they will achieve their missions. 

At the end of the project, pupils/groups should show that they:

1. Can listen to and say most of the vocabulary and  phrases that have been used during the story.
2. Have understood and be able to retell the story, and may have developed their own version of the story.
3. Understand the historical context.
4. Know some of the cultural sites of the country from which the language they are studying. 
5. Show how they have shared this with or worked together with pupils from their partner school. 

Some further ‘more structured’ ideas to use within an eTwinning partnership (but teachers can of course develop their own ideas too!):

1. Play each 5 minute podcast each morning during registration. Pupils each or in groups describe what happened in the episode and what might happen next. They write their ideas in the TwinSpace Pupils' Corner blog.
2. After each 5 minute podcast, teachers allow pupils to complete online interactive quiz related to the episode. Pupils could do this as homework and compare how long it took them to complete, posting times in the TwinSpace forum.
3. Using the vocabulary and phrases used in each episode, pupils can practice these phrases, record them as, for example, a podcast or voki, post them in the TwinSpace and ask partner pupils to listen and write a comment to explain what they said (this will help develop their pronunciation and communication of the language). 
4. Use the map provided (e.g., Paris) or develop their own map to ‘plot’ the journey of the character in each episode. Pupils compare maps to see if they agree.
5. If a ‘cultural landmark’ is mentioned in the episode, pupils can find out more about that landmark.
6. Pupils can find out about the original historical event, and make presentations to share with each other.
7. Using such tools as Comic Life, pupils can create a visual presentation of an episode.
8. Drama can be brought in to re-enact one or more episodes, using appropriate the language, which can be videoed and shared with partner schools.

Web redaktors: Christina Crawley Publicēts: 21.04.2011 Pēdējo reizi mainīts: 04.11.2011