The chapter addresses an insufficiently researched aspect of education of the Roma population, using the example of their performance at foreign language learning in Slovenia. The theoretical foundations of language learning, the historical situation, and the current living conditions of the Roma support the thesis that foreign language learning success among the Roma is poorer than the performance of non-Roma. This affects their success levels in other subjects requiring language competence. After considering the importance of foreign language learning for each individual and the current didactic concept of foreign language learning, our empirical research for Roma pupils demonstrates that they tend to learn foreign languages pragmatically rather than in academic ways that are more abstract; that lifestyle circumstances force them to speak at least two languages; and that they are more successful with German, which they are more likely to use and learn than English. Such results require radical reflection, revision, and innovation of existing language learning didactics.
F.29 Contribution to the development of national cultural identity
COBISS.SI-ID: 20753160The lecture tried to show the intercultural or rather multicultural connections in Swiss literature. The lecturer outlined the specific Swiss situation with four official languages and thus four different cultural situations. Then she concentrated on the German speaking part and stressed another Swiss special feature: the use of the dialect in almost all oral communication. Furthermore she presented some of the paradigmatic authors, whose mother tongue is not German but they write in German and thus connect different cultures. They represent several cultures and despite their multiculturality they are classified as Swiss authors At the beginning Slovenia was also briefly introduced. The American students were very much interested in it.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
COBISS.SI-ID: 20566024Igor Maver collaborates on the preparation of thematic issues and prepares short reviews of articles for publication, especially in the field of Australian and Canadian literatures
C.06 Editorial board membership
Movens: Crossing cultural and aesthetic boundaries is a network of Germanists made up of researchers from the Universities of Stockholm, Göteborg, Limerick, Ljubljana, Greifswald, London and Berlin. The network that started in November 2005 is mainly focused on studies regarding crossing national as well as language borders, on international and interdisciplinary acting and new ways of pursuing literary scholarship. In June 2014, the yearly conference has taken place in Izola, Slovenia, under the title “The Meeting of the Waters: Fluid Spaces in Literature and Culture”. The aim of the conference was to show, how the phenomenon of water appears from a cultural, historical, literary, intercultural, intermedial and interdisciplinary perspective. There were more than 30 research presentations by the senior colleagues as well as project presentations by the participating PhD students from 12 Universities. End of 2015, a scientific monograph will be published by Iudicum Verlag.
D.01 Chairing over/coordinating (international and national) projects
COBISS.SI-ID: 55159650The scientific monograph about the contacts and co-influence between the centre and the margin is the result of research carried out by scientists who study intercultural contacts and approach them from a cultural and literary-historical standpoint. Most researchers are the members of the programme group, while the editors also included a few young researchers from abroad. The book that popularizes the question of centre-margin contacts brings fourteen case studies. Each of them from its own point of view presents the relation of power between the central and the marginal and looks for common points, point of divergence, mutual influences and intertwining. The essays represents new views of notions such as space, border, identity, foreignness, homeliness, movement, cinematography, co-influence, cultural contacts and intercultural mediation. These are analyzed in historical as well as contemporary contexts. The essays are written in German or Slovenian language, one of them in English. The monograph already on the macro level draws attention to interlingual and intercultural exchanges that did not only mark the »old world« of the long 19th century, but are increasingly present also in today's co-existance in European space.
C.02 Editorial board of a national monograph
COBISS.SI-ID: 276709888