According to the students themselves, face-to-face lessons are more valuable, but remote training is easier because family specifics are such that you can be with your children, especially for moms who breastfeed children. But the biggest disadvantage of remote learning is that you cannot learn all the four skills, especially writing. Therefore, it was a great advantage to study face-to-face in December, face-to-face lessons were attended willingly by the family members who found it difficult to learn remotely. It was also valuable that through our mother tongue interpreter we could clarify vague grammar items.
The course of Latvian is currently continued by 3 groups: customers from Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo and Uzbekistan. Two groups learn face-to-face at CAS “Mucenieki”, while one group learns remotely on the Zoom online platform, where the group includes asylum seekers from Belarus, who live in Jurmala, Ogre, as well as CAS “Mucenieki”. The teacher, L. Zilberte, acknowledges that the online platform is ideal for training for students living in different towns and who have good skills in working with the latest technologies and where one language can be used as intermediate language in communication. “These group lessons are only part of the process, but students already show an initiative after the end of this course to continue training in other courses, so together we have completed applications for learning Latvian so that students of this group can continue their training in courses of the Latvian Language Agency in February”.
Due to the uncertain situation due to the spread of Covid-19, there is a possibility that face-to-face lessons would have to be switched to remote learning. We are already flexible and, if one of the students is ill or in quarantine, it is possible to follow the training process online or to receive a recording of the lesson in Zoom. Remote training during quarantine is hampered by the fact that there are several persons (families with 6 children) in one room who have no technical means available to continue the training process qualitatively.
Although the programme is designed for the target group to reach level pre-A1, it should be acknowledged that highly motivated groups can reach level A1 and continue to learn the language already at level A1/A2. This is demonstrated by the representatives of the target group, who completed Latvian language learning group 3 in March 2021 had have recently passed the Latvian language examination receiving level A2.
Support Actions for Persons Under International Protection III project is implemented with the support of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and is co-financed by the European Union. Grant agreement No. PMIF/9/2020/3/02/