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Improving Access To Employment Through Language Education

The Barcelona Centre for Linguistic Normalization (CLN) welcomes over 17,000 students from 127 different countries. The classes are thus an active example of diversity and the respect of difference. It is for this reason that the CNL has adopted intercultural dialogue as one of the strategic values of its educational project, in which new arrivals are acquainted with the characteristic traits of Catalan culture, not in terms of a single, homogeneous model but rather from the position of exchange, plurality, interaction and the miscegenation and hybridisation of culture.

Its aims are to

  • Continue promoting the knowledge of Catalan in collaboration with the Consorci de Normalització Lingüística (Language Normalisation Consortium) and facilitating the learning of Spanish in collaboration with associations in the city.
  • Adapt the knowledge of the languages for professional sectors so that, at the same time as people are learning the language, they are adding to their professional qualifications. For example:
    • Courses and materials associated with the field of assistance to the elderly, to certain services and commercial sectors, etc.
  • Carrying out specific policies offering Catalan courses for groups in which a scant knowledge of Catalan is detected, in order to avoid anyone in Barcelona, for whatever the reason, being excluded from knowing it, for example:
    • Materials and courses at a basic level for the Chinese and Pakistani communities.
    • Carrying out activities, making course offers known through the specialist media of immigrant groups. Facilitate the teaching of the languages of origin in schools - out of school hours – providing this is in response to a request by the parents.

Other activities include:

  • a programme to furnish skills to people from immigrant groups to be “qualified disseminators” of their languages of origin and provide them the tools to promote the teaching of the languages of origin amongst immigrant groups.
  • Drawing up a protocol for the translation of foreign languages at Barcelona City Council.
  • Promoting and providing support to the different programmes of language pairs that exist in the city, both in the exchange of Catalan as well as in the languages of origin of immigrants.
  • Giving support to programmes of language exchange in groups.
  • Promoting the Espai Llengua i Cultura (Space for Language and Culture) as a reference for the dissemination of cultural activities in Catalan amongst students who are learning it and as a space for intercultural stimulation.
2016
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