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Talking About Language and EmotionS at Home
Start date: Sep 1, 2016, End date: Aug 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

TALES@home (Talking About Language and EmotionS at home)This project aims to empower multilingual families in their language management at home. With reference to this management the focus is on language attitudes and emotions and this for two main reasons:- Multilingual families play a significant and important role in the language learning of the family members and this for all languages concerned (minority languages, heritage languages, languages of integration). Attitudes and emotions influence motivation and the learning of these languages.- Language use in the multilingual family influences the wellbeing of the family members. Multilingual families should be supported to create an optimal environment for language learning and wellbeing. They should create an open atmosphere in which decisions on language maintenance /shift are considered and debatable. They should reinforce the mutual understanding between different generations and a positive approach to anguage learning. This means that they have to become aware of language attitudes and emotions from the different family members. They should be able to handle negative attitudes and reinforce the positive ones. This is a family matter for each multilingual family.Professionals (educators, social/medical workers, teachers etc.) working with multilingual families are confronted with family members who sometimes struggle with the multilingual context that they are living in or who express negative connotations towards the home language and/or language of integration. The negative attitudes influence their wellbeing and/or language learning. These professionals need tools to help clients to express the attitudes and bend them in a more positive direction and this supported by the family. The central tool is an interactive application (app). The app will provide the possibility to the family members (from 6 years on) to input their emotions and ideas concerning the language use at home. Professionals will introduce the use of the tool in the family and support the communication about the outcome. To develop this app the chosen approach is “User Centered Design”; this means that the stakeholders (families and professionals) will be strongly involved in the process of development. To support the correct use of the app a user guide and short film will be provided.In line with this, a training course for professionals will be developed. This training will put the app in a broader framework. It will provide background information and will aim at raising awareness in the group of professionals to take into account language attitudes and emotion in language learning and the wellbeing of the family members. When the project is finished the app, users guide and film will remain freely accessible to the users. The partners involved will integrate the training in their organization and/or appeal to other organizations to provide this training when necessary.During the project people will be stimulated to follow the development of the project by newsletters and a website. Leaflets will contribute to awareness raising about the project. Dissemination will be provided throughout the project and in May 2018 we plan a conference in Brussels.Partners:Soros International House (Vilnius, Lithuania), EURAC Bolzano (Bolzano, Italy), UNIPA (Palermo, Italy), Double Helix Recourses (London, England), Foyer vzw (Brussels, Belgium): are the partners that will provide the theoretical background and elaborate the constant involvement of the stakeholders from first questioning until finalizing the development of the app. Howest, Department Devine-Digital Design & Development (Kortrijk, Brussels) is responsible for de design and development of the app and will lead the other partners through the methodology of User-Centered-Design.ENSA-network (Brussels, Belgium) will sustain the dissemination.

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