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In many countries stakeholders take initiatives to stimulate students' media literacy, such as (free) distribution of newspapers to teachers, the so-called Newspapers in Education (NiE) programmes. The aim of these initiatives is to promote reading, stimulate interactive ways of teaching and create a generation of critical thinkers and informed citizens. The success and effectiveness of initiatives of this kind depend on how teachers use newspapers as teaching tools in class. In this study we examine the use of a local NiE programme and shed light on its determining factors. 454 Flemish teachers (Belgium) in primary and secondary education and 219 student teachers (Bachelors and Masters) participated in the study, which followed a mixed-methods approach. The results show that if newspapers are (freely) distributed, teachers use them as teaching tools quite intensively as teaching tools. One of the most determining factors is the extent to which teachers use media themselves and work on media creation in their classrooms. This finding indicates that school board members, pedagogical counsellors and teacher educators can support and stimulate NiE programmes by paying explicit attention to these elements, e.g., during pre-and inservice training as well as by focusing on the development of media literacy competencies of teachers.

<div data-canvas-width="30.450735457166097">Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) is an important challenge for language learning. In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), subjects are taught in a language that is not the learners’ mother tongue; a context that could reduce FLA. This study analyzes whether CLIL can positively influence FLA and which characteristics determine its presence in a CLIL context. Data were collected from 225 pupils, their parents and teachers in Flemish-speaking Belgium. Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied, with pre- and post-measurement. Results indicate that CLIL can indeed positively influence FLA. Pupils experienced growth in their self-confidence to use the foreign language. Their teachers observed more active participation, especially from more silent and less proficient pupils. The parents also noticed an increase in communicative attitudes. We found eight variables to have an influence. The foreign language used in CLIL appeared to have the most important influence besides the pupils’ interest in language learning and their personality traits, extraversion and agreeableness</div><div> </div>

Sociodialectological research on border dialects, viz. vernaculars spoken in localities near a political or national boundary, has some advantages over traditional dialect studies – especially when of a more rarely found cross-border design. Depending on the language situation on each side of the border, i.e. in two separate diasystems (cf. Goossens 2000a: 335), one observes constellations with different, similar or identical standard languages roofing equally different, similar or identical dialects, and this in a small-scale setting, i.e. in often comparable extralinguistic conditions.   The reported study investigates functional and structural dialect change at the Dutch-German border (Low Saxon dialect area), using proficient but all the same “natural” dialect speakers (N= 40) aged under 45 or over 55. In this article the outcome of the main linguistic hypotheses is discussed, presenting comparatively less structural levelling (Røyneland 2010: 261) in the German dialect. Functional loss, however, is proven to be smaller in the Dutch dialect. These findings are assumed to be connected with the varying standard-substandard constellations in the Dutch and German diasystems and their differing interference potentials. It is shown that dialect loss and regiolectization, even when attested in nearly identical dialects, evolve dissimilarly on both sides of the border. Next to this the article also provides an overview of the amount and quality of levelling products found in the informants’ speech.