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Language / Communication
Working with Older Volunteers in Manual Intergenerational Projects
Based on the experience with another project the project partners searched for
new methods which were appropriate to encourage communication during
the cooperative working process in a target group of older people with no or
little knowledge of foreign languages. Although the methodical approach of
common inter-generational work weakens the importance of verbal expression,
the need to interchange in terms of language may not be underestimated.
Coordinators of international exchanges with senior citizens should consider
that in this specific target group most of the participants do not have
sufficient language skills to be able to converse with the guests and hosts or to
join in the working process smoothly.
Accordingly, it should not be taken for granted that the involved children
and adolescents act as interpreters unless they get suitable support by the
teachers. This can be significantly improved if it is an explicit part of the
project and if it is taken into account by the adolescents’ supervisors in the
preparation phase.
Thus we recommend considering this issue in advance and – depending
on the resources provided (funds, time, personnel) – choosing one of the
following options:
Possible Proceedings
• During the initial selection of the participating seniors make sure there
are members with particular language skills who might be able to act as
interpreters on the project.
• If older children and adolescents with the required language skills participate,
they may take over the interpreter’s role after having been prepared
properly. (It is the participating school, including the teachers, who are in
charge of this).
• Preparative language courses for the older people (if there is sufficient time
and there are suitable financial resources)
• In the methods section coordinators of exchanges for older people will
find exercises and techniques that might initiate communication on the
exchange, if none of the above-mentioned proceedings is useful.
Recommendation
Experience during the exchanges within the TRAMP-Project has shown that
the hosts usually dominated in numbers, which can easily generate a linguistic
superiority of a particular language. Thus it is highly advisable to make the
guests’ language(s) audible and to visualize it in many different ways. In the
methods section you will find suggestions.
Set of Methods 99