The EULALIA project (European Latin Linguistic Assessment) is aimed at developing a comprehensive framework for the international certification of linguistic competences in Latin, following the model set by CEFR for modern languages. In Europe more than 3 million students in secondary schools study Latin. At university level, Latin figures in many curricula, but the linguistic competence required of students can vary substantially across programmes (also within the same country). Only in the partner university institutions 9.000 students will study Latin at BA Level during the duration (30 months) of this project. This situation ends up having negative consequences for ERASMUS exchange students, since the ECTS system is not sufficient in itself to guide them in their choice of courses at the host institution. There is therefore a strong need for homogeneity and transparency in the recognition of skills and qualifications, in order to facilitate internationalisation and Europe-wide student mobility in the framework of programmes such as ERASMUS. The teaching of Latin also faces further challenges due to ongoing changes in contemporary society, and has to renew its methods by adopting open and innovative practices supported by multimedia digital technologies. There is evidence that this will favour the inclusion of categories such as students with special needs (visually impaired, individuals with learning disabilities) and students who, due to recent immigration, are not native speakers of the language of education in their new home countries. EULALIA creates an international framework for the certification of Latin language competences, and designs teaching activities that will be needed to develop the competences to be certified. The project will implement two different levels of multimedia certification tool-kits (one for the Basic and one for the Advanced Level) including a syllabus, a lexicon and a collection of exercises, which will be the product of the expertise of the involved partners. The design of the tool-kits will follow a multimedia approach: all textual input will be accompanied by audio tools, with the aim of strengthening the role of the auditory channel in Latin teaching, to assist the number of learners with special needs. These comprehensive tool-kits, together with the certification tests, will be made available on an open access digital multimedia platform. This way, the involved institutions will collaborate in defining a genuinely European certification model, which is as respectful as possible of differences, open, inclusive and usable across all teaching levels (secondary school and higher education). EULALIA will be the work of a transnational partnership composed of 6 universities: the University of Bologna, the University of Cologne, the University of Rouen Normandie, the University of Salamanca, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Brescia), the University of Uppsala, thus involving 5 European countries. All these institutions have a long tradition of excellent scholarship and teaching in Latin, as well as expertise in digital humanities, teaching of modern languages and pedagogical strategies regarding special needs. EULALIA is addressed at various target groups: university students, students at secondary school, lecturers and teachers of Latin, both at university and secondary school. Stakeholders are represented in our partnership by scientific associations and educational offices, fostering the study of Latin and monitoring the certification activities of some local pioneering experiments. In cooperation with the stakeholders EULALIA aims at producing an active impact on educational policies in a national, European and extra-EU context. In order to reach this goal, the elaboration of a certification framework needs to be addressed at a transnational level. The project is articulated in two macro-phases, the first directed at the elaboration of the theoretical guidelines, at the design of the multimedia tools, and at the creation and testing of a certification model for the basic level, together with the appropriate tool-kit. In the second macro-phase the work will be extended to the advanced competence level, and the multimedia tools will be further implemented. Besides the production of the relevant outputs, activities within the project include transnational project meetings, international multiplier events involving teachers and other stakeholders, a transnational learning activity, and a number of measures to extend our network and actively involve policy makers. While the short-term impact is mainly linked to participants in the project, the main actors engaged in the long-term impact of the project results will in fact include educational systems at a local, regional, and national level, in order to ensure that the certification framework becomes widely adopted in Europe and, thus sustainable well beyond the limits of this project.
First EULALIA intended to address the need for a dialogue between different educational systems and levels of education; to this purpose, following the CEFR model, we intended to create a framework for the assessment of Latin skills that would be shared, open and compatible with different teaching methodologies and across different levels and systems of education. Secondly, our project aimed to meet the need for innovation and inclusiveness in Latin teaching: in pursuing this goal, however, we wanted to avoid upsetting the teaching methods in use in the various educational systems. Our intent was to exploit TICs to propose the auditory channel as an ancillary resource that could be supplemented with regular teaching to promote memorization of basic vocabulary and syntactic structures. Therefore, we wanted to create an additional learning channel available to all students, but particularly beneficial to special categories of students who need an alternative channel to the visual one. Finally, we wanted our certification to clearly distinguish Latin language skills from Latin translation skills so as not to disadvantage non-native speakers of the languages of countries where Latin is learned.
The project addressed some strongly perceived needs of Latin students (3,5 million, according to Univ. of Leipzig, 2014) and teachers: 1) the need to see clear recognition of Latin language skills, especially in the transition between different education levels (school and university), both within individual countries and across different countries. In fact, the study of Latin is conducted within very different programs in 27 European countries (Eacea 2017): the competency level can vary substantially from school to school, from university to university. Both Latin students and teachers hardly see recognized their skills, beyond the field in which such skills were formed. 2) the need for innovation and inclusiveness in Latin teaching. Latin teaching is often anchored to a model focused almost exclusively on writing and reading, excluding the auditory learning channel. This reduction of learning channel disadvantages all learners, especially students with visual or specific learning problems that slow down reading. Moreover, the traditional centrality of translation from the earliest stages of learning creates difficulties for the non-native speakers of the languages of the countries in which the education takes place.