On Monday 28 June 2021, the library of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA) was the setting for the first physical meeting of the Committee of Ministers of Taalunie since the start of the corona pandemic. In the inspiring environment of the exhibition “Today will end” by the Indian artist Shilpa Gupta, the Flemish ministers Weyts and Jambon and their Dutch colleague Van Engelshoven set the stage for future-oriented initiatives to make Dutch courses stronger, improve language competence and give better support to language users and language professionals.
From Paramaribo, Surinamese Minister of Education Marie Levens also joined the meeting online. Suriname is an associate member of Taalunie, and can become involved in the work of the organization when both parties consider it useful and possible. Based on the multi-year policy plan 2020-2024, Taalunie formulated a number of concrete proposals for activities for and in Suriname. Minister Levens explained what Suriname attaches importance to in the coming years.
During the previous meeting, the Committee of Ministers gave the order to reflect on the declining student numbers of Dutch courses. The General Secretariat, together with representatives from the sector, wrote a vision text and an action plan for a decisive and future-proof Dutch policy. The text describes the action points that are necessary for Dutch studies to be an even more effective and future-proof scientific domain. These action points will now be further investigated with government services from the Netherlands and Flanders.
In recent years, Taalunie has played a connecting role within the language area in the field of reading in all its dimensions: effective reading education, reading comprehension and reading pleasure. This is being further developed, but at the same time this does not mean that other language competences are left in the shadows. Too many students in Flanders and the Netherlands do not achieve the main objective of writing education, namely the ability to write well-written, clearly structured and clearly argued texts. However, writing is a competence that is closely related to reading. What's more: both competencies reinforce each other. The Language Council for Reading Comprehension is therefore transformed into a Language Competence Council that will formulate advice on writing from a linguistic, educational and social perspective.
Following the recent launch of the electronic edition of the General Dutch Speech Art (e-ANS), the general secretary also explained how Taalunie, together with other important partners such as the Institute for the Dutch Language, offers support for language professionals in various ways. and language users. The website taaladvies.net with answers to many concrete questions about language and spelling will be given a new look on 9 September, and the e-ANS, where language professionals can go for a detailed description of our language, will be gradually developed, with the launch of a new chapter on the sound theory of Dutch.
The meeting concluded with a look back and a look ahead. The annual report reported on the special corona year 2020, with the presentation of the ZorgVoorZorgPrijs as a recent offshoot. The week of Dutch, with a focus on Dutch worldwide, and the presentation, in mid-October, of the Prize of Dutch Letters to the Surinamese-Dutch author Astrid Roemer by the Belgian King Filip were looked ahead.
Source: Taalunie.org
Photo: ©Frank Bahnmuller