Foreign language speaking students will enjoy better conditions of studying Romanian

The ethnic minorities in Moldova want to learn the Romanian language. Therefore, favorable conditions will be created for the linguistic integration of the foreign language speaking students, Deputy Minister of Education Tatiana Poting said in a roundtable meeting, where there was presented a résumé of the draft plan of action for improving the policy on the teaching, learning and assessing of the Romanian language and literature in schools for foreign language speaking students, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Until now, there were only monologues about the necessity of knowing the official language, which are given only in election campaigns, and political statements. We want to take this theme out of the politicians’ umbrella as the studying of the official language must have a social, not political connotation,” said Tatiana Poting. In this connection, Minister of Education Mihail Shleahtitski said the results of the pilot-project to teach a number of subjects in Romanian to foreign language speaking students show that the linguistic discomfort disappeared and the students want the number of subjects taught in Romanian to be extended. The project was implemented in ten national education institutions. OSCE experts in implementing linguistic policies Ligita Grigule and Pavlo Bealic said the best results are achieved in the schools where there is a continuous dialogue between the teachers, parents and students. They also said that there are no examples in Europe, when similar reforms would have been launched after everything had been prepared. All the necessary materials and teaching aids in these countries were designed in the reform implementation process. The pilot-project started on September 1, 2011 in ten education institutions. Such subjects as civic education, musical education, technological education, geography and even history are taught in Romanian. In Moldova there are 240 Russian teaching institutions.