“A different language is a different vision of life” Federico Fellini, Italian film director
1. THE ROLE OF THE MULTY-LANGUAGE EMB DICTIONARY
This dictionary aims to become an effective tool in order to address issues related to bullying since the first useful phase of solving a problem is the definition of the problem itself.
The creation of a multilingual dictionary deals with the need of understanding how deep our students' consciousness is about feelings and actions related to bullying.
Giving the right name to the feeling or emotion felt is an important milestone for our students, who are not often used to explaining how they feel.
To recognize certain events of bullying, it is important for the students to be able to address the problem, report the grievance and learn how to defend themselves.
Our dictionary is divided into three sections:
The words of bullying
Games related to bullying
Cyber vocabulary
2. STRUCTURE
In the first section, next to the list of the various terms in the English language, we present the translations into 11 languages spoken in member countries. We have also included the definitions of individual terms according to grammatical categories.
In the second section you can find some language games: puzzles, acrostics, crossword puzzles, search for hidden words, anagrams and so on, mostly created by pupils and teachers of the Italian team with the support of European partners.
The third chapter of the dictionary was created by students and teachers from IES Miguel De Unamuno School in Spain and edited in the last version by the Italian team. The original version is available on Wikispaces platform (ERASMUS MINUS BULLYING https://erasmusminusbullying.wikispaces.com.)
3. SKILLS ACQUISITION
Creating this dictionary enabled our students to improve some academic skills.
They got better in using ICT
They improved in English language use, learning a lot of new words and playing with them in order to create games and activities to become aware of their meanings
Concerning social skills,
They acquired a good team spirit, working in pair or in team
They developed peer cooperation by means of a new kind of vertical communication and cooperation between teachers and students
They showed their creativity, initiative and their good level of social interaction
4. OVERALL BENEFIT
Students are acquainted with bullying and anti-bullying vocabulary. They are engaged in entertaining activities of comparisons among languages, during which, discovering more common linguistic elements than not can be a very thought-provoking experience. Learning through playing, again, imbues the whole procedure.
5. WHEN AND HOW TO USE THE EMB ANTI-BULLYING DICTIONARY
With your students you can:
Reflect on the listed words, trying to empathize with the situations related to them
Discuss the emotions felt by the individuals involved in a bullying episode
Play and try to invent new games on the topic or versatile topics
Create funny stories offering positive messages to "win the war against bullies!"
You can incorporate it:
In an English lesson
In anti-bullying school activities on Special Days
