Tweet11-06-2010 om 12:00 by Sueli Brodin

“Sorry :-)” An intriguing subject line, I thought, and quickly opened the email message.  “Take a look at this request, my colleague at the European Journalism Centre wrote, I believe it’s an unpaid assignment but it might be a useful and rewarding experience on other levels.”

My smile broadened as I read on. The Language Academy (Talenacademie) in Heerlen was looking for a French juror for its trilingual Media Reporter competition. The task consisted in reading about 70 journalistic articles written in French by Dutch, German and Flemish secondary school students and in taking part together with the rest of the jury team in the final selection for the three best submissions in French, German and Dutch.



Poster with winning articles

I visited the website of the Language Academy and learned that it was an independent service and expertise centre for languages, founded in 1992 at the initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Education and the Province of Limburg at a time when the Maastricht Treaty opened the borders of Europe and increased the need for more and better language education among European citizens.

The Media Reporter project started in 2008 as a biennial European competition for Dutch, German and Belgian students between the ages of 12 and 18. For its second edition, the Language Academy received more than 400 submissions, with as many as 150 articles written in French. A number of students also sent in a video reportage for the complementary video contest. In most cases, participation in the project had been encouraged and coordinated by school teachers but some students had also submitted a piece on individual basis. Surprisingly, none of the contestants came from our province of Limburg.

Around 80 people - students, parents, teachers - gathered last Sunday in Maastricht for the Media Reporter award ceremony. Some of them had travelled all the way from Sneek in the northern province of Friesland or Diksmuide in West Flanders.



Finalists from a school in Wallonia, Belgium

A teacher from a school in Eindhoven, upon learning that I had served as one of the French jurors, asked me which criterion had prevailed in choosing the final winners: “Was it the language?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” I replied honestly.

In order to be as fair as possible, I told him, my fellow jurors and I had taken several other factors into account during the evaluation process, such as the choice of topic, headline and illustrations, the structure and the treatment of the story, the style and the originality of the overall piece and the age of the writer.

Since it was a reporting competition, we had ultimately recognised the contestants who had fully played the game and used language as a tool for communication, those who had revealed a convincing journalistic approach in their work and a visible eagerness to share a story that mattered to them. They had done the necessary background research, covered the topic from various angles and illustrated it with relevant examples and quotes. It was as if they had been more motivated by the idea of stepping into the shoes of a reporter and communicating a message than by the prospect of winning a prize.



Interestingly, the articles revealed some striking similarities per country of origin. In broad lines, Dutch students generally showed only an average level in their knowledge of French and German (vocabulary, grammar, spelling) and of originality in the choice of topic (Sinterklaas, chocolate flakes, cheese), but had struck the jury by their creativity in style and treatment, in the way they played with the words and the layout, resorted to humour and interacted with the reader.

Comparatively Belgian and German students appeared to master their second language better, but were more academic and perhaps stiffer in their writing. As one of the jurors noted: “In Belgium and Germany, students don’t submit an assignment unless they feel sure that it is correct. Dutch students are generally less bothered about making mistakes, they are freer and more imaginative, unconventional.”



Finalists from a school in Sneek, Friesland

The award ceremony contained all the usual ingredients of suspense, surprise, joy and perhaps disappointment too. The winners in each category looked pleased with their reward (a day at the German WDR studio in Aachen, or at the Limburg regional media company L1, a trip to Paris) and all the finalists received several gifts (cinema tickets, USB sticks, entrance tickets to amusement parks etc) besides their official Media Reporter certificate.



A French teacher from Diksmuide in West Flanders and her husband took advantage of the Media Reporter award ceremony to spend the weekend in Maastricht

The winner of the French category, 17 year old Robin Declerck from the Koninklijk Atheneum in Diksmuide in West Flanders, was not able to attend the award ceremony because of impending final exams. His French teacher accepted the prize on his behalf and described him to me as a “very serious” student from the scientific section who showed a lot of motivation in learning French. “Robin decided to write about  “Les grands travaux inutiles: vraiment belge!” (The great useless works: really Belgian!), because it’s a typical Belgian issue he feels very concerned about,” she told me. “As a matter of fact the city of Diksmuide itself is directly affected by an unfinished highway which creates enormous traffic jams in the area. Robin felt that it was an important story that needed to be told.”



Varsenare, Belgium. Unused motorway bridge over the Ostend-Bruges railtrack. Part of the never built Calais-Zeebrugge motorway connection. (Source: Wikipedia)

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