Project funded by the public call for (co-)funding of projects aimed at the presentation, promotion and development of the Slovenian language and its promotion in 2022 (Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia)
Project promoter: SLORI
Responsible: Dr. Matejka Grgič, Dr. Susanna Pertot
Project implementation period: 2022
The target audiences of the project are teenagers living in the Slovenian minority settlement area in Italy, their parents, and professional staff, particularly teaching staff. The project aims to promote the use of the Slovene language, encourage reading literacy and the use of language technologies, develop other language skills, and enhance language portals.
Research has shown that communicative ability of Slovene speakers in Italy is declining, with the greatest decline occurring in the transition between lower and upper secondary school (ISCED 2 -> ISCED 3). Adolescents thus represent a particularly vulnerable population in terms of minority language use. In order to ensure the continued use of the Slovenian language, it is essential that speakers achieve a high level of communicative competence, which today also includes, to a greater extent, textual skills and reading ability in the online, virtual and digital environment. For this reason, the use of the language and other online portals that allow exposure to the authentic use of the Slovene language in all communicative contexts should be encouraged in this age group.
The project is innovative in that it is one of the few tools aimed at promoting language use among adolescents and young people (other similar projects mainly target children and their parents, educators and teachers). In addition, the project pays more attention to digital and virtual environments, which have not been at the forefront of developing the communicative competence of the target group, and to concepts such as exposure, translanguaging, empowerment, etc.
The main activity of the project is the creation of a new web subpage on the Smejse – Slovenščina kot manjšinski jezik portal (www.smejse.it/najstniki), which collects the material produced as part of the project:
– the PDF of a bilingual handbook for parents and teaching staff;
– the PDF of an information booklet aimed at adolescents and preadolescents;
– recordings of some meetings and workshops with target groups;
– other materials (e.g., press releases);
– useful hyperlinks to other content published on the same portal (e.g., hyperlink to the Rastoča slovenščina project funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia) or other platforms.
The first phase of the Dvojezično najstništvo project began with extensive research work, collecting data on online resources, tools and other content and reviewing existing academic literature on language acquisition in adolescence.
The second phase involved writing a comprehensive bilingual handbook for parents, teachers, educators, cultural workers, coaches and other professionals. The bilingual booklet has undergone two blind-reviews (by Dr. Martina Ozbič and Prof. Fabiana Fusco) and is therefore classified as a professional publication. The work is available in PDF format at www.smejse.it/najstniki, and 5.000 printed copies were distributed free of charge to schools with a Slovene language of instruction in Italy, as well as to other Slovene organizations operating in the area of Slovenian minority settlement in Italy (boarding schools, cultural and sports associations, libraries, etc.).
The second phase also included the production of a brochure aimed at adolescents and preadolescents. This, too, is available at www.smejse.it/najstniki.
All texts produced by the project were corrected and some (such as the brochure) were completely translated into Italian.
In the third phase, the presentation of the project and its results took place. In order to reach as wide a group of users as possible, we decided to combine live and remote presentations; the live meeting was held in Gorizia.
A short press conference (7. 11. 22, 5:30 p.m., remote) was held immediately after the presentation of the brochure and leaflet.
On Monday 7. 11. 22 an educational workshop for teachers, residential school educators, youth workers, coaches and other personnel in contact with adolescents and girls was also held. The workshop for educational staff was held remotely on the Zoom online platform.
On Tuesday, 8. 11. 22 the first meeting for parents was held (in Slovenian, remotely on the Zoom platform) and on Thursday 10. 11. 22 the second meeting (in Italian, live, at the Gorizia Studentate).
The recordings of the distance meetings are posted on www.smejse.it/najstniki and thus also available to other potential users after the end of the project.