The Department of Research and Universities has launched the campaign "Si et canvien la llengua, no et tallis" to publicize the linguistic rights of students and university teachers and to disseminate the linguistic rights mailboxes enabled by universities. The campaign wants to particularly influence the protection of Catalan, the language most affected by unjustified changes in the language of teaching.
Catalan universities are committed to maintaining the language of teaching indicated in the teaching plans and guides. For this reason, at the beginning of the course each university makes public the language in which the different groups will be taught, which allows students to have this information before enrolling and choose the option most appropriate to their needs. Once the course has started, the teaching language cannot be changed, even if a student requests it, because this would violate the rights of the students who had enrolled in the subject or group assuming that it would be done in the announced language.
Universities have linguistic rights mailboxes to confidentially channel queries and complaints about changes in the language of teaching or other issues related to languages in the university environment. The website “Linguistic rights at the university”, of the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat, brings together the linguistic rights mailboxes of the twelve Catalan universities.
On the other hand, the Department of Research and Universities also promotes linguistic reception for students from outside the Catalan-speaking territories who plan to carry out an academic stay at a university in Catalonia. This year, in collaboration with the Institut Ramon Llull and the Catalan universities, Catalan courses have been organized in fifteen universities abroad, aimed at students who will do an Erasmus in Catalonia and want to start learning this language before arriving. These courses are free, correspond to level A1 and last 30 hours, taught intensively over a few weeks. The website “Study Catalan before arriving in Catalonia” includes both these face-to-face courses and the different virtual options to learn Catalan.
In addition, mobility students will also be able to learn Catalan through the OLS (Online Linguistic Support) platform of the Erasmus mobility program. The OLS is an online language learning platform aimed at Erasmus students to provide them with the necessary linguistic resources so that they can begin learning the language of the country that will host them before arriving. The inclusion of the Catalan language in the OLS had been a historical demand that, finally, will become a reality starting with this course.
All these measures are part of the actions planned in the Plan to strengthen the Catalan language in the university and research system of Catalonia, promoted by the Department of Research and Universities in collaboration with the entire knowledge system, with the aim of guaranteeing the linguistic rights of students, teachers and the entire community of the country's university and research system, and preserving the role of Catalan as its own language.
