Implementing Entrepreneurship and Critical thinking skills in combination with English Language learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Implementing Entrepreneurship and Critical thinking skills in combination with English
Language learning

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

The purpose of this project is to facilitate an ‘exchange of good practice’ which will aim to develop a Bootcamp programme for students where they will be able to learn entrepreneurship and critical thinking skills in conjunction with English language learning.

Learning entrepreneurial and critical thinking skills is not only an additional incentive when taking an English language course, but it is also a necessity. Necessity to the extent that people who learn another language, usually learn it in order to develop their competencies professionally. An advanced vocabulary and competency skill expansion are particularly important and can increase employment as well as increase career opportunities nationally and internationally.

The rhythm of modern life has become so fast and saturated, that language educators must think of new, exciting and advanced language learning incentives, in order to encourage students to learn languages, hence increasing the number of new customers.

This project is born as a response to the current reality across all partner organisations. Firstly, to the need of encouraging and educating teaching possibilities for English language learners. And secondly, to the need of reaching new groups of potential students to increase the number of new clients for the organisations. All partners involved see this project as an opportunity to address these needs internationally by sharing and confronting practices and methods.

Valodu Mape Sia (Latvia) is the leading organisation in this project with 15 years of expereince in language teaching for youth and adults, including unemployed people, migrants and foreigners which have business in Latvia. Valodu Mape will look after the coordination process between all partner institutions and project management activities for this project.
Eurospeak (UK) is predominantly active in the field of youth and adult education in language learning, vocational and educational training (VET), intercultural understanding, community development and e-learning. As native English language speakers they will be responsible for quality management and evaluation in terms of proofreading all materials used in the project.
Akademie für Politische Bildung und demokratiefördernde Maßnahmen (Austria) is a NGO that pursues further education in the sense of political education. They have already implemented numerous projects in the entrepreneurship area and have experience in the design of innovative teaching methods. Their main responsibilities will be related to implementation of the dissemination plan.
Edu Compass Foundation (Bulgaria) is a NGO which focuses on developing employability skills, including foreing language learning and literacy skills as well as cultural studies. Their main responsibilities will involve creation and management of evaluation plan and evaluation reports.
Libera Università Europea Terza età Campania (LUETEC) (Italy) has established itself as a LLE center for young and adult people offering different training paths for young, adult and elderly students. Their experience in short staff training courses design and implementation both at local and international level is an added value in this new project. Their responsibilities will involve preparation of projects’ sustainability plan.

As part of this project five transnational meetings (TPM) which will include 2-3 participants from each organisation, one teacher training with the same amount of participants as well as one learning mobility/Bootcamp for students with around 15-20 participants will be held. In total we plan to involve at least 300 participants.TPM’s are the key instruments for project coordination and management. The mobilities play a fundamental role in the achievement of the project goals and objectives. The teaching training will enhance staff competencies and skills in each organisation.
Methodologies we will apply are research, piloting, dissemination, questionnaires.

As a result of this project, we expect to find an accurate layout of the Bootcamp Programme which can then be implemented across all partner institutions. We hope to be able to encourage and facilitate the ‘exchange of best practices’ in English language teaching, expand the number of students we are able to reach, and increase awareness amongst English language teachers and students of skill-based learning. This Strategic Partnership project will also enable us to establish long-term, fruitful partnerships with the participating organisations, which will benefit us mutually in the future. In respect to long term benefits, we hope this project will prove the necessity to develop other skill based programmes in conjunction with language learning accross adult education institutions. It will open an opportunity to develop further projects with an intellectual output giving greater possibilities for adult organisations to provide courses with approved
educational programmes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 41703,1 Eur

Project Coordinator

VALODU MAPE SIA & Country: LV

Project Partners

• FONDATSIYA EDU COMPASS
• Eurospeak Language Schools Ltd
• Akademie für politische Bildung und demokratiefördernde Maßnahmen
• LUETEC