Learning on The Road
September 27, 2006
The local community college and the public transport operator have teamed up to bring foreign languages to Hamburg. Bus posters and flyers and subway information screens will teach the basics of Turkish and English to travelers.
"The aim is to use the idle time people have in public transport by concentrating their brains on something else, which is learning another language of the EU," explained Angele Giuliano, one of the coordinators of the project in Malta and whose company developed the project's multilingual Web site.
"You don't really appreciate another culture without knowing the language," she said. "There are some things you can't translate."
The idea for "Learning by Moving" came from a language school in Vilnius, Lithuania, Soros International House, which developed the project with partners at other schools and secured 385,000 euros ($493,000) from the European Commission to help finance it. The program kicked off in Lithuanian buses this week.
Learning on the road
Now Vilnius commuters can pick up Polish and English words in between the normal announcements of stops. And, if they're inclined to fill out feedback forms, they can win a free language course, as can those willing to take part in other cities.
In addition to Hamburg and Vilnius, commuters in the southern Polish city of Wroclaw have been able to ride to and from work to the sounds of German and English since Tuesday. In Malta and Milan, passengers will have the opportunity to practice Spanish and English; in Iasi, Romania, they'll travel to the melodies of Italian and English; and in Torquay, in southeastern Britain, the campaign will focus on promoting language learning in general.
Hamburg's pilot project will run for four weeks. If the project is a success, it may be rejuvenated in the spring, possibly with other languages, said Tina Allerheiligen, a spokeswoman for the northern German city's largest public transport operator, Hamburger Hochbahn.
The Hamburg campaign, however, appears to be one of the more limited ones. In Malta, for example, the project is set to run for a year on buses throughout the small island-country. Recognizing that bus drivers often play the radio during their shifts, the coordinators there even got air time to broadcast the language lessons over the airwaves.