Languages Week Scotland 2021 recently took place last week (February 1-5) and was held online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This year's theme was 'Celebrating Scotland's languages landscape' and the aim was to amplify the voices of people, organisations and events that celebrate multilingualism and the many ways it manifests in Scottish communities. SCILT leads on Languages Week Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. SCILT invited children, families, schools, communities and organisations to engage with the week through the hashtag #scotlandloveslanguages on Twitter.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney opened the week with a statement on the SCILT website and on social media. At the same time, the Scottish Government confirmed local authorities will receive £2.4 million funding for the current year to support the continued teaching of languages through schools. Through his collaboration with the event, John Swinney set a daily languages challenge through Twitter and the range of challenges enabled learners at all stages, from primary to FE/HE and families at home to celebrate language learning and languages in the community.
Wednesday's challenge was an invitation for the nation to flood Twitter with tongue-twisters in languages other than English (an example can be found here) - a language learned at school or a language spoken at home. On Friday, the challenge was to find objects in other languages around the house (an example can be found here).
At the start of the week, SCILT posed the question, "What do languages mean to you?" and received these answers:
· https://twitter.com/HazeldeneFamC/status/1356193926810632193 (Hazeldene Family Centre)
· https://twitter.com/SLHSLangComm/status/1357705773418225666 (St Luke’s High School)
· https://twitter.com/Glasgowlangs/status/1357656721422966785/photo/1 (Notre Dame Primary)
Many partners across the country joined in, including City of Glasgow College Library Service, Scottish Book Trust, BBC Scotland Learning, the National Museum of Scotland, Luath Press, and Project Trust.
Two events, primarily aimed at language teachers, will follow on from Languages Week Scotland, later in February. Registration for Language Teaching: Learning from the Past (taking place on February 17) and Scotland's Languages Landscapes: Equity in Diversity (taking place on February 26) is now open and links for registration can be found below.