Activity Report Reintegration center RECEA AWO Heimatgarten

Activity Report

Reintegration center RECEA AWO HEIMATGARTEN

In December 2013 a reintegration center was established in Yerevan  based on the German educational and cultural centre.

Address: 0070, Yerevan, Alen Manukyan str. 13, ASPU building (Faculty of Philology), room 405, tel. 37410556030138.

Partners: Armenian State Pedagogical University after Khachatur Abovyan and German educational and cultural center.

The Center is active in the following areas:

• social adaptation of remigrants to their new environment;

• psychological help;

• language classes;

• awareness-raising for the Armenian culture;

• development of tolerance;

• cultural program of introducing students to the national culture, literature, history and historical monuments.

The knowledge of their native language (Armenian) and the resulting ability to communicate in that language is an integral part of social adaptation and integration for children and adolescents. Both the involvement of children in the educational activities, as well as the activities and excursions in the city and beyond the city borders like visits to museums and other cultural attractions help these beneficiaries to get acquainted with their own culture.

Psychological assistance is provided by the ASPU teacher Lilit Bagdasaryan. The main focus of these activities include stress relief, decrease of general anxiety as well as fighting with difficulties in adapting to the new environment and the language barrier as one of the main problems of remigrants.

The cultural approach aims to implement the principle of cultural adaptation as one of the most important principles of modern education to facilitate the integration of the returnees.

The involved remigrants in Armenia face the following problems:

• entering a new social environment;

• a new and unfamiliar school system;

• lack or insufficient knowledge of the Armenian language;

• new life conditions.

Solutions to these issues manifest themselves in the assistance of the center and facilitating adaptation of children and adolescents to a new school environment, stimulating the formation of language acquisition in Armenian, Russian and German.

Language courses

At the centre, the children have the option to learn the following languages: Armenian, Russian and German.

Teachers: Gayane Terzyan, Bella Ayunts, Shushanik Petrosyan.

Volunteers: Anait Sograbyan, Nara Asatryan.

Kolya Simonyan works in the reintegration center since December 1st, 2012. He is the assistant of RECEA director Prof. Dr. Melanya Astvatsatryan.

His responsibilities include:

• phone calls;

• organization of meetings with parents;

• training evenings, festivals, excursions;

• checking homework;

• preparation of test items;

• monitoring sessions;

• discussion sessions with teachers;

• translation of training materials from German into Armenian;

• translation of training materials from Armenian into German.

In the process of teaching languages, the following positions are especially significant:

• heterogeneous nature of linguistic knowledge and language acquisition on different skill levels

• multi-level communicative competence;

• language convergence, similarities and differences;

• social importance, the role and importance of the Armenian language as a cultural aspect

• activity-based approach to learning;

• multi-layer thinking;

• visualization;

• didactic tours like trips to museums and other cultural or historical facilities

• Use of various technologies for the language acquisition process.

The implemented activity-based approach promotes the development effective learning strategies, whereby the students themselves plan their actions and learning strategies, establishing their own individual route.

This active approach includes:

• learn by performing actions and using the language (practice-based learning)

• involvement of children in activities;

• establishment of individual reward mechanisms to learn with pleasure;

• learning through role-playing or game-based technologies, including songs, rhymes, puzzles;

• interconnected learning of various language skills (e.g. reading/writing, vocal communication, .listening comprehension)

Multichannel learning - input of all sorts of channels to maximize the training effect: visual, auditory, manual, light, sound, music.

The implemented visualization techniques do not only cover substantive but also pictorial visibility. For example, using graphical diagrams can model the structure of words, phrases or sentences. Significant importance belongs to the games that enhance motivation and the interest of the students, which has a positive effect on the process of language acquisition.

In the process of organizing language classes, the teachers have attempted to implement learning strategies within the program "Development of Critical Thinking through Reading and Writing" (DCTRW) by Charles Temple with certain adjustments on their part. The program is based on basic conceptual model presented in three categories: "Call, comprehension of the content, reflection". In brief, the interpretation of Charles Temple’s model begins with the teacher connecting the lesson with previous experiences of the students, as well as with their own requests. Then comes the stage at which the students are actively investigating, exploring new material and in this process gradually mastering it. At the final stage, the students can record what they have learned and use new material to perform certain tasks. This method of mutual learning and collective way of learning has proven to be effective and enjoys a high level of acceptance among the students. As the authors of the DCTRW program claim, students do better in school and can improve their own skills by explaining or teaching certain aspects. The mutual learning process is carried out in small groups, in which the teacher distributes social roles among the students. For example, the role of a supervisor, responsible for performing tasks in the group (the leader) or a stenographer who is writing down every step. The teacher first demonstrates the roles, and then the learners take on these roles.

In the process of collective learning activities, the whole group is involved in the work. The instructor demonstrates open questions using a computer or writing on the chalkboard. Children are given specific time to answer these questions individually, either orally or in writing. The children then turn to each other and share their answers with their partners.

Control Methods and Testing Procedures

For the successful organization of the learning process, the focus is set on the quality factor of language acquisition. Using monitoring methods, the teacher receives information about the success of the training. Written tests or control works are usually held after studying specific topics and specific material to test and evaluate the quality of each student's learning. For this purpose, the following methods are used:

• Conduct pre-test written surveys as long as the teacher is not satisfied with how well the students have understood the studied material;

• Informing students 1-2 weeks prior about the work and the organization of the relevant preparatory work;

• Preparatory tests, which have the purpose to determine the degree of preparedness of students in upcoming exams.

These methods also contribute to regular homework checking, which allows to identify gaps in the knowledge of the students. For this, traditional and nontraditional forms of checking homework are used alternatively. The most traditional and effective kind of work consists collecting notebooks for inspection work performed at home, which is generally a highly time-consuming work. Less time-consuming techniques include mutual homework authentication among the students. Of course, this mutual testing process is carried out under the supervision of the teachers. Another type of test consists of one the students writing his homework tasks on the board and then each student checks his homework in comparison to the verified example. However, the most common form of the validation of knowledge and skills of the students consists of standardized tests based on objective, close-typed testing principles.

Learning Difficulties

All teachers recognize and mark different level of language knowledge among their students, not only due to age-related features, but also as a result of individual characteristics and individual learning styles. Some students are more receptive to new material if they work together with a companion, while others are more receptive to the background music or with the help of modern songs. The language classes various teaching approaches help to identify and use these different learning strategies to accelerate and facilitate the language acquisition process.

The biggest obstacle for the classes is the constant inflow and outflow of students. On such conditions it is difficult to maintain a uniform language level. Incoming new children more need individual training, which makes the teachers' work more complicated. One way to solve this is to activate certain more experienced students as educational assistants and thus involve them in educational and didactic services new students need to fully integrate in the learning group. A side effect of this practice is that the chosen assistants among the students gain the opportunity to explain the contents of the classes and consequently  improve their own abilities through this process.

The Armenian language itself creates a few obstacles for the learning process of this particular language. For instance, as the language of teaching for all subjects (Language for Education), as an independent subject of learning (Language in Education and Language as Subject) and for mastering Armenian secondary school examination (through written tests). Each of these target systems requires special techniques and teaching strategies.

Certainly, in the course of studying languages, there are objective difficulties for typical Armenian students. Quite substantially the specificity of the Armenian language has to be taken into account. The Armenian language belongs to the Indo-European family, but is an agglutinative language, revealing at the same time an extensive system of inflections and analytical structures.

In the process of teaching, difficulties arise related to the laws of interference of the spoken language. One of the main problems is that interference signals are common mistakes among all students. All teachers note the difficulties arising due to lack of generic differentiation in the Armenian language, which negatively affects the introduction and consolidation of personal and possessive pronouns interfaced with the category of gender (like he/she/it and his/hers/its).

To overcome unwanted interference in different groups (beginners and advanced), teachers practice different strategies and techniques for advanced groups

Advanced groups have the advantage not only in terms of increasing the volume of knowledge, but also a wide use of the acquired language experience.

Later, in connection with the expansion of knowledge of other languages like Russian, interfering phenomena may be explained with support of the language.

In the latter case, the technology works well "extra explanation", namely return to the previously passed phenomena and their presentation and explanation on the new, higher bilingual level.

Report of a Russian teacher - classes for migrant children

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN.

METHODS AND CHALLENGES

The student develops himself not only as a linguistic identity, but also as a carrier of local, European and global culture. In Armenia they learn primarily with the acquisition of language skills rich cultural heritage of the country. Heimatgarten Adaptation Center in Armenia , established on the basis of ASPU actually becomes not only a center of learning, but also a place of "language" meetings for migrant children learning multiple languages, primarily native (Armenian) and attached to the respective cultures of carriers of a particular language. Developing this idea, it can be said that the meeting of people is also the meeting of cultures. Only in the case where the child is studying a language and gets familiar with the culture, traditions and norms of behavior specific country, only then he will be able to understand them. Concept of intercultural learning becomes at the present stage of development of the key.
Russian language teaching began in the January 2013. Currently 17 children are learning the language. Classes are based on textbooks:
• Antonov VE, Nakhabina MM, MV Safronova , AA Tolstoy "The Road to Russia", St. Petersburg,Chrysostom,2008;
• Miller L.V., Politova L.V., Rybakov I.J.  " Once upon a time ... " (textbook and workbook), St. Petersburg,"Chrysostom",2008;
• Lebedeva M.N. " Russian language with a smile. Short stories , jokes , dialogues , "Wiley, 2012;
• Shtelter O. " In this small basket ... Games in Russian lesson ", St. Petersburg , " Chrysostom,2012;
• Akishina A.A. "Russian language games ", Moscow, 2011 (various game tasks , crosswords, puzzles , charades ) .

The purpose of Russian language course in the adaptation center is not only the mastery of language and speech competence and communicative competence in general , but also the formation of socio-cultural competence at level A2 - B1, the accumulation of background knowledge, familiarity with the traditions of Armenian society, norms of behavior, communication registers.
In the process of teaching the interactive methods are used. Language is taught in a dialogue mode of implementation (oral productive speech) with the principle of information novelty. In parallel receptive skills (listening and reading) are developed. With regard to the formation of reading material provided by the so-called multi-level plateau of texts, ranging from A1 (Belyaeva G.V., Gorskaja E.I., Eremina L.I., Lutskaya N.E . Listen . Ask . Answer . Russian language . Courses . 2004; Gubieva I.G., Yatselenko V.A. Russian texts. Book for reading in Russian for foreigners. Russian language, 2010; Karavanova N.B. Read and understand everything! : A Guide to reading and language development for foreigners studying Russian . Russian language , 2009).

Of course, there are learning difficulties related to the structure of different systems of languages: Russian, Armenian, German, that belong to different language families. For contingent not speak Russian, great difficulties are grammatical categories that are not in the Armenian language. It is primarily about the category of grammatical gender that permeates various lexical and grammatical level words: noun, adjective , pronoun, ordinals. Under these conditions, only the implementation of the communicative approach does not give the desired results. In the learning process, we have developed and tested cognitive operations aimed at the differentiation and recognition of these phenomena and concepts. For example, personal pronouns 3 person singular (he, she, it), corresponds to the Armenian one undifferentiated concept նա. The challenge is for students to use techniques aimed at singling out three separate concepts նա 1 , նա 2 , նա 3. Signaling via a different color cards the labeled person as masculine, feminine and neuter. Using elements of role-playing game (acting- mother, father, brother, sister, boy, girl, etc.) are identified generic terms , and then realized generic differences. Only after realizing the generic differentiation on the material of the native language , you can continue to master the appropriate equivalents in the studied language, in our particular case Russian language .

Similar difficulties arise at the lexical level. Interference source are cases of semantic mismatch volume of lexical units. In this there is a need to knock situational data acquisition units with an illustration of the micro and macro context.
There are also some organizational difficulties. Teachers have to deal with the newly arriving contingent. It does not make much sense to put them into the already existing group, where children already possess some knowledge. For this reason, the teacher has to deal with them individually and intensively so that they were able to "catch up" with the group.
Intercultural learning involves extensive use of computer technology. Familiarity with virtual reality opens up new possibilities in the educational process through the creation of jobs, including cultural studies oriented to perform actions in the process of listening, speaking , reading and writing. Introduction of information technology significantly increases the motivation of students to study Russian language for communication, language and cultural interaction.

Report of the coordinator of the RECEA project in Armenia: N. Mnatsakanyan

Report of the coordinator of the RECEA project in Armenia: N. Mnatsakanyan

• In August 2013 an Armenian family of 3 members was back from Germany: mother and two children. They lived in Saxony in a camp for migrants over 1.5 years. As long as S. K. could not adapt to the living conditions of the camp and had serious moral issues, she made a decision about volunteer re-emigration. The expenses of the flight were covered within the project RECEA. She got a financial and social support for the all members of her family after returning to Armenia. During her stay in Germany Smbatyan was suggested to represent a business plan for starting her own business. She chose an agricultural work: in particular, grain sowing. This plan was realistic, because this woman lives in a village, and agricultural work was familiar to her.

Her family was ready to support her and have its own input. Employees of the Hope and Help NGO helped her in writing a business plan, paid home visits and discussed all with her parents. The plan was approved and funded by 2000 euros within the project RECEA. At this current moment cultivation of the land, grain sowing and fertilization of the land is implemented.

Her children go to school. The family refused to visit RECEA centre, because it’s far from Yerevan, and very often there’s no opportunity of the transportation of children, so as to engage them in lessons. In addition, she received more 2000 euros for the organization of the household, medical examinations and the treatment/ she has serious health problems/. It’s worth to mention that her mental state has recovered significantly, she started to believe in herself. She found a job: is giving computer classes at the school. Very often she calls to the NGO, as keeping in touch with the NGO workers, getting their support, makes her believe that her decision to return to the homeland was right.

• D. F. was back to Armenia from Bulgaria in October, 2013. This beneficiary was a volunteer within a youth project. The reason for an early return was an unexpected illness. In total he stayed in Bulgaria only 1.5 months.  While returning from Bulgaria to Armenia his winter clothes were lost. An advocate was hired by the NGO within the project, so as to compensate his loss from the air company Al Italia and obtain a health insurance. D’s state is stabilized, behavior is adequate. He has computer skills, and was suggested to take a training course on learning more difficult computer programs for enhancing his competitiveness in the labor market. The idea interested him and he promised to choose a course. He received 250 euros within the project.  

• C. G. and her two children made a decision of a voluntary return from Bulgaria on September 2013. She lived in Plovdiv for the last 15 years. She settled down in parents' house, because she doesn’t have her own one. Her one child visits the RECEA center. Her mother looks after her youngest child: so as to organize a daytime care in the kindergarten the registration should be done a year before.

C. received 250 euros for attending hairdressing courses. For this purpose hairdressing equipment was purchased. She received 1100 euros for improving her life conditions after her return.

C. is very determined, motivated to learn hairdressing and is sure that she can succeed in practice also. During the talks very often she mentions about her right decision to return to Armenia. She addresses to the H&H NGO on various life issues.

• K. M.  is 22 years old. He returned from Germany on December 2013 after staying there for 4.5 months. Since he voluntarily returned to Armenia within the RECEA project, he got a chance to use the services suggested by the project. K.was suggested to represent a business plan for a grant. He chose to run his own car wash business.  

After returning to Armenia he visited to the  NGO office two times, and for the few times he  had phone conversations with the employees of the project.

Suggested business plan is not realistic at this stage: proposed price for the car wash territory was unreasonably high, prices for the purchase of equipments are overestimated and the payment of a hired employee is estimated law. At this stage, the joint work continues on a business plan.

• Spouses A. K. and V. O. voluntary returned on January 2014. They live in the village Khandjyan 70km away from Yerevan. They are typical representatives of the countryside: entire life they were occupied by agriculture and cattle raising by cultivating vegetables, keeping cattle and piglets. Till now the cow-shed is preserved in a usable condition.

They live with their son’s family in a stone cottage. In general the house is in a normal state for living, though in two rooms the roof leaks.

These migrants have many problems: they need to recover their documents, formalize their pension issues and strengthen their mental state. While being in Germany they applied for a business plan to get an opportunity to keep cattle. When the employees of the project visited them at their place, they could prove that are able to realize the proposed plan. While formalizing the pension issues on the base of pure health state they will have to wait for the medical documents from Germany regarding V’s health state. 

                                                                             

                                                               

• H. O. is 62 years old. He returned from Bulgaria to Armenia on January 2014, where he lived over 15 years. He doesn't have his own house here and will be settled down at his relatives for some time. From the very first visit it was obvious that he has psychological issues because of the 15 year absence from the country. He has issues of social adaptation and separation from his family.

Addresses of some apartments were suggested to him for a rent the day he visited the NGO. O. preferred apartments which are closer to his relatives’ location. He was consulted on various issues: documents’ /passport, driving license/ formalization. All details connected with the financial support, conditions of realization have been discussed.

He received his passport, driving license, and a temporary apartment was rented for him. With the help of his relatives he is actively searching for a car for the further usage a taxi. He keeps in touch with the employees of the project all the time.

A week later, after his return to Armenia his mental state has significantly changed, and he is ready for the further cooperation within the project, he has a clear vision of his future, and sees perspectives in job and further adaptation.