Teaching Romanian as a Second Language
Description
40 refugee children from Ukraine are learning Romanian as a second language through a pilot project supported by the Romanian-American Foundation (RAF).
By the end of 2023, an efficient teaching model for Romanian as a foreign language will be developed to aid the integration of refugee or migrant children.
Four teachers, trained by a Fulbright specialist, use custom teaching materials developed by a team led by the University of Bucharest to deliver 132 hours of intensive Romanian (2 hours/day).
The four groups are hosted by RAA partners: “Mihai Viteazul” National College, “Ienăchiță Văcărescu” School in Bucharest, and the Regional European Center for Social Interventions (CREIS) in Iași.
At the end of the 132 hours, the practical experience of the teachers will be transformed into a second manual for teaching Romanian as a non-native language.
In addition to the ESOL approach (English for Speakers of Other Languages), which focuses on the immediate communication needs of students, the pilot project also proposes an institutional structure capable of addressing the national integration challenge through linguistic efforts.
Throughout the project, the resulting educational materials have been made freely available to all interested parties.
Context
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, approximately 90,000 refugees have registered in Romania, with half of them being children.
The government opened the school system early for Ukrainian children but lacked an adequate program for learning Romanian, essential for attending regular schools.
The approach to teaching Romanian to Ukrainian refugees is inefficient due to a lack of experience.
It is often assumed that teachers must speak Ukrainian or Russian to teach Romanian, severely limiting potential teachers.
Additionally, the learning approach is inadequate in intensity (only 1-2 hours/week) and overly focused on grammar rather than functional communication.
The ESOL approach focuses on students’ immediate communication needs without requiring an intermediary language.
In conclusion, three key improvement areas are necessary: developing an effective approach to learning Romanian (using ESOL principles and greater intensity), providing specialized training programs for teachers, and creating a better institutional setup to handle the unprecedented number of refugees.
Methodology
Piloting a Linguistic Training Model for Ukrainian Refugee Children
The pilot has two objectives:
- To verify if the approach used in the program (inspired by ESOL and followed by pre-designed materials under the supervision of a Fulbright Specialist) produces the desired effects on students.
- To understand which elements in this approach are not sufficiently familiar to Romanian teachers and need to be covered through training for teaching Romanian as a foreign language.
Four groups of students will undergo linguistic training for 3-4 months, followed by an evaluation of their progress.
Additionally, the teachers who teach these groups will provide feedback on the elements they found challenging.
Information about this model (students’ progress, additional needs of teachers) will be aggregated into a short report by the policy analysis expert.
The language courses have an intensity of 6-10 hours per week for three to four months and are aimed at Ukrainian refugee children aged 9 to 13, ideally selected from public system audiences, but also from among children participating in day center activities.
Teaching will be provided by four teachers who participated in the introductory training offered by a Fulbright Specialist in the fall of 2022.
Development of New Educational Materials for Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language
In a separate intervention in the fall of 2022, a set of materials was created under the supervision of the Fulbright Specialist, covering approximately 3-4 months of teaching.
A new set of materials, also covering approximately 3-4 months of teaching, will be added to this program, using the same team of content creators, again under the supervision of the Fulbright Specialist.
All materials will be made available to all teachers who teach Romanian to Ukrainian refugees as open-source educational materials.
Policy Analysis on Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language for School Integration
An expert (or team of experts) will collect information on three levels:
- What an effective learning experience should look like for students (in terms of teaching approach, curriculum, materials, intensity, etc.)
- What an effective teacher training program should include (as a future certified training for teaching Romanian as a foreign language to non-Romanian speakers)
- To what extent the institutional architecture within the public education system could support such a model.
