Third consortium meeting - A big step forward

It was hosted by the Association for Language Learning (ALL), the major UK association for teachers of languages.

This was the first meeting of the REAL Network as a legally recognised body and had a number of different objectives:

• to summarise the achievements of the REAL seminars run in Romania, Poland and Germany in 2010, and to channel the feedback received into planning for the 2011 seminars in Italy, France and Spain;
• to lay the foundations for the operation of the organisation: how it will recruit members, how it will collect subscriptions and the services it will provide to members;
• to introduce the tools available to partners and other interested parties to disseminate the work of the organisation – the website, newsletters and promotional materials.

The formal launch of the new legally established European Network of Language Teacher Associations (Réseau européen d’associations de professeurs de langues - REAL) took place on Tuesday 18th January at the University of Leicester, where the Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Leicester, Councillor Colin Hall, and the Vice Chancellor of Leicester University, Professor Sir Robert Burgess, formally welcomed the project partners to the UK and to the city of Leicester, and wished the Network well for the future.

ALL Director Linda Parker said: “This is a big step forward for REAL and the chance for us to create an effective network of language teachers across the EU. There's strength in numbers, and by working together we can tackle many of the challenges of teaching a diverse range of languages to a broad spectrum of learners; we can speak up for language learning and language teaching and become the voice of language teachers in Europe.”