Soros International House (SIH) organized an international conference "Non-traditional Language Teaching Methods & Learner Attitudes Towards Them" on 30th May, 2008

The conference, which was the final event of the very successful Socrates/Lingua project „Learning by Moving" and was dedicated to SIH 15th year anniversary, was a good opportunity for language teachers, adult educators, policy makers and learners to share good practice experience and present the newest and most interesting work methods , used in different parts of the world.

As it was the conference about the non-traditional language teaching methods, it was started in a non-traditional way-with an impressive pantomime show. Conference organizers wanted together with the actors to send a message, that people have to communicate, that a dialogue should be kept among people of different sexes, nations, cultures and religions, that any communication starts with doing one‘s best to understand each other.And that for this understanding we need a tool, which is called LANGUAGE.

 Then Daiva Malinauskiene, Soros International House director welcomed guests from 13 countries: Italy, Romania, Germany, Poland, England, Bulgaria, Canada, USA, Greece, Austria, Brasilia, Belgium, and university teachers, representatives from local language teaching centres, Ministry of Education and Science and Ministry of Social Security and Labour, Lithuanian Association of Adult Education, Education Exchange Support Foundation, SIH staff. The conference was attended by special guests: Gillian McLaughlin , Head of Sector: Languages and LLP Coordination, Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency from Belgium and Michael Carrier IHWO Executive Director, who were key speakers of the conference.

 

During the plenary the following topics were presented:

· Increasing multilingualism: The contribution of the Lifelong Learning Programme

· Teaching Languages Through Culture

· Multilingualism: Changing the Mind Set

· Education and Communication for Democratic Citizenship

· Presentation of "Learning by Moving" project Presentations by representatives from Transport Companies involved in the project

When the plenary session was over, conference participants split into 3 work groups. During one of the workgroups non-traditional language projects were presented. These projects had aimed to promote language learning using out of classroom environment such as public transport, supermarkets and others. The other workgroup which was comprised of language teachers shared experience, presented innovative language teaching methods such as teaching languages through a suggestopedic course, using drama, music or even SMS. The third workgroup discussed issues on the importance of motivation in adult education, visions and reality of LLL and others. The conference got a lot of positive feedback from the participants. There were people present not only from local mass media, but journalists from other countries as well.