Training and accreditation exams in Buenos Aires
Euskara. Kultura. Mundura.
The Etxepare Basque Institute´s Euskara Munduan programme is designed to promote an understanding of the Basque language among Basque communities around the world. As well as providing financial support and material for teaching Basque in Basque centres, the programme promotes training for Basque language teachers. Basque centres usually need to train their own teaching staff, which can be a major challenge.
The intensive training course took place from 15 to 22 July at the Laurak Bat centre in Buenos Aires. A total of 22 students from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay took the B1.2 level course. Gabriel Arce, Irene López de Vicuña and Gabriela Mendia, all of whom learned Basque in the diaspora, taught for a total of 54 hours over the course of eight days.
Euskara Munduan coordinator, Kinku Zinkunegi, was in Buenos Aires and, as he explained, "the evolution of this group has been atypical and quite complex: the programme started in January 2020, but due to the pandemic they have not been able to follow a normal process. The intensive training courses — usually two each year, in January and July — were online." This was the first in-person training course.
The day after the course ended, the exams accrediting the level of Basque were held. Eleven people took the C1 level, three took the B2 level and six took the B1 level.
"At the moment, having eleven people in Buenos Aires who are going to take the C1 exam is a milestone, a huge achievement," said Zinkunegi.
Keep in mind that 95% of what they know they have learnt in Argentina or Uruguay, online, and ten thousand kilometres away from the place where Basque is spoken.