Gate to Languages (, ) is a project of lifelong education of teachers, organized in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

by National Institute for Further Education (NIFE) since 17 October 2005. It is aimed at the development of foreign language skills and methodological competence of Czech

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

s. The name of the project was inspired by the book ''Janua linguarum reserata'' (Gate to Languages Unlocked) by Jan Amos Comenius. NIFE organizes the

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

and language courses for three target groups of teachers at Czech elementary and secondary schools and higher education institutions: *Teachers without specialized qualification for teaching a foreign language, who, despite this fact, teach or are going to teach the language. This group involves mostly elementary school teachers of English, German and

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

who partly speak the language, but who were originally qualified in teaching different subjects. The course consists of 200 lessons and focuses on both teaching the participants the foreign language and provide them with some methodology training. * Teachers qualified in teaching a foreign language. This group involves qualified teachers of the above-mentioned languages, who want to improve their methodological competence. The course consists of 30 lessons. * Teachers of other subjects or non-teaching experts working at a school. In this group participants of the courses have a possibility to learn a foreign language, but the courses are not designed to present the methodology of its teaching. The course consists of 150 lessons. 7,173 teachers from the Czech Republic take part in the project, among them 6,340 in the English courses, 700 in the German courses and 133 in the French courses. 75 per cent of the expenses are financed from the European Structural Funds and the rest by the Czech Republic Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The courses for qualified language teachers were finished in June 2006, the whole project is planned to finish in the end of June 2007.

References

{{Authority control Czech educational programs Language teacher training English-language education Education in the Czech Republic