Student to learn French through cooking

Education Minister Louis Galea and French Ambassador Patrick Chrismant yesterday inaugurated a French teaching kitchen as part of the French Immersion Project inaugurated three years ago within the French Resource Centre at the Junior College, in Msida.

The kitchen was yesterday being used by 26 students from Can. P. Pullicino School of Rabat.

Dr Galea said more than 8,000 people had used the French Resource Centre since it opened.

The French Immersion Project was launched within the centre three years ago to commemorate the European Year of Languages.

The aim of the project is to enable students to immerse themselves in French for a couple of hours during a simulation visit to the French region of Brittany.

Dr Galea said there were more than 13,000 students of French in Malta and more than 120 teachers of French.

He said the country's relations and economy required that as many Maltese as possible spoke the languages of peoples Malta had good commercial relations with. This was vital to strengthen the country's competitiveness.

The minister said he recently launched a new initiative to analyse all subjects taught and studied in Maltese schools.

Preliminary discussions with the main partners in every subject had already been initiated.

These discussions should lead to a national conference on the methodology, assessment, results, quality of teaching and the resources teachers required.