ABCami
ABCami was a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2012 to August 31, 2018 , which offered literacy courses for Turkish and Arab migrants on literacy and basic education in mosques as well as in associations and churches.
Pilot project
In the ABCami pilot project (2012–2015) the concept was successfully implemented in three Berlin mosque communities. In the second project phase (2015–2018) ABCami was introduced at 25 locations throughout Germany. In addition, the project was expanded to include Arabic-speaking refugees in January 2016 and to learners from the Syrian Orthodox and Assyrian Churches of the East in July 2016 .
concept
The conception of the literacy courses at ABCami is based on the following three approaches:
Protected learning locations
The literacy courses take place in mosques, associations or churches, ie in places that are familiar to the learners and offer them a protected place to learn. People of all ages meet regularly in these places to be socially active with other people. They cook together for a good cause or take sewing courses, to name just two of the many examples. The course instructors come from the immediate environment of the learning locations; course instructors and course participants often know each other, which creates additional trust.
Situation approach
The literacy courses within the ABCami project are based on the situational approach . Significantly influenced by Jürgen Zimmer 40 years ago, it has been continuously developed and can be used as a basis for learning at any age and in any facility. Jürgen Zimmer defines it as "an invitation to get involved in life". 16 guiding principles in the areas of education, participation, equality and difference, lifeworld orientation and the unity of content and form form the so-called situation approach. Jürgen Zimmer starts out from people's real life situations and develops them as learning situations. Real life situations or everyday realities of the learners are also what shape the ABCami curriculum. Not only do course participants learn to read, write and arithmetic in ABCami's literacy courses, they also learn how to use these skills in everyday life. These include u. a. writing shopping lists, filling out transfer forms and getting around the city using public transport and the like. For the work in the mosques, one guiding principle is particularly relevant: educators are teachers and learners at the same time. Learning is an ongoing, lifelong and especially reciprocal process. The teaching units not only teach reading and writing, the course leaders learn a lot about the culture, the way of life and the language of origin of the learners. The consideration of the language of origin is reflected in the contrastive approach of ABCami.
Contrasting approach
The contrastive approach is based on findings from contrastive linguistics , according to which learners of a second language (L 2 ) learn it better if they refer to already existing knowledge in the first language (L 1 ), keyword: positive transfer. Here, different, linguistic aspects of two languages are compared with each other in order to discover differences and similarities between the two languages. These can be phonetic , phonological or etymological aspects of two languages. Here are a few examples: The same pronunciation of the German letter sequence “sch” and the Turkish “ş”, the diametrical articulation of the voiceless and voiced s-sound in Turkish and German, the German word yogurt is borrowed from the Turkish yoğurt, what means fermented milk.
Access to the target language through appreciation of the language of origin
Addressing these differences and similarities in class leads to better access to the target language. In addition, the participants' native language is highly valued. It is not viewed as a deficit souvenir from the learners, but rather as a significant wealth of experience. In general, the contrastive approach doesn't just begin with the comparison of languages, but starts much earlier. Starting a lesson with a “good morning” in the native language or praising it in the same does not require a lot of knowledge about the language (s) of the learners, but it can build many bridges. In 2005, Alexis Feldmeier outlined the advantages, possibilities and limits of the contrastive approach in literacy work in an essay. In addition to the educational aspects of the contrastive approach, he particularly emphasizes the appreciation of the language of origin of the learners as one of the greatest motivating factors.
Web links
- Homepage abcami
- Program details at UNESCO
- BERLINER MORGENPOST report from May 5, 2015 on the ABCami project
- Josefine Janert: Finally being able to read the ticket machine . In: The time . No. 48 , November 26, 2014, ISSN 0044-2070 ( online ).
- Film contribution "Who decides?" By students of the design academy berlin on the ABCami project and the mosque as a learning location.
- Report by SPIEGEL ONLINE from September 25, 2016 on the ABCami project
- Report of the Taunus Zeitung from October 26, 2016 on the ABCami project
- Report of the Tagesspiegel from December 15, 2016 on the ABCami project
- Report of the Rheinpfalz from May 26th 2017 on the ABCami project
Individual evidence
- ↑ ABCami - literacy and basic education at mosques. Retrieved February 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Rita Haberkorn (2009): The situation approach is an invitation to get involved with life with children. In: Karin Sanders, Michael Bock (ed.): Customer orientation - participation - respect. New approaches in social work. Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 75–99.
- ↑ Alexis Feldmeier: The contrastive literacy as an alternative concept to bilingual literacy and to literacy in the second language German using the example of the languages Kurdish and Turkish. In: DaZ. 2/2005, pp. 42-50.