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niaqornaarsuk
For a school project I was asked to create a research problem I wanted to solve in a way that was both novel and creative within the field of communication. As it happens, not long before I was presented with this assignment, I had been skyping with my mom.
My mom lives in a small village called Niaqornaarsuk in Western Greenland, where she works as a teacher of Danish and English. The population of the village is around 300, and the number of students in the school is between 50 and 60.
Since the majority of her students may never leave Greenland, my mother has found it difficult to motivate them to learn Danish and English. That is the problem I want to solve.
My mom lives in a small village called Niaqornaarsuk in Western Greenland, where she works as a teacher of Danish and English. The population of the village is around 300, and the number of students in the school is between 50 and 60.
Since the majority of her students may never leave Greenland, my mother has found it difficult to motivate them to learn Danish and English. That is the problem I want to solve.
Skype interview with Sidsel Møller.
The first step for me was to research what had been written about learning languages, and how big a role the culture of a language can play on that. The research I found said that it is important to learn about the culture of a language, if you hope to learn it properly, and also that peers play an important role in language acquisition. It’s easier to learn a language if you have friends supporting you, and practicing with you. Sure, the rules, the grammar and the syntax you might be more comfortable learning from an educated teacher, but the best way to learn a language is to speak it. And who would you rather speak with – your teacher or your friends?
After thinking long and hard, and talking the project over with friends and my mom, the solution presented itself. I want to pair my mom’s students up with indigenous students in Nunavut in Northern Canada, and have them send short videos to each other on a YouTube channel that I have created for the purpose. The YouTube channel is called Englandic.
My hope is that creating these short videos will be fun for them, which would keep them motivated to continue. Seeing the videos of other students like them, with a similar culture, but who live outside of Greenland and who speak English will make them want to learn the language that they need to communicate with them. This way, they will make friends from other parts of the Arctic, and correspond with them visually and digitally. It’s almost like pen pals, without the written part, which is where the inspiration came from.
My hope is that creating these short videos will be fun for them, which would keep them motivated to continue. Seeing the videos of other students like them, with a similar culture, but who live outside of Greenland and who speak English will make them want to learn the language that they need to communicate with them. This way, they will make friends from other parts of the Arctic, and correspond with them visually and digitally. It’s almost like pen pals, without the written part, which is where the inspiration came from.