Soros International House is participating in a new KA-2 project "Light Me Up!-Language Lessons for Abroad"
The aim of the project "Light Me Up!" is to use the objectives of the LLP in order to promote the benefits of language learning among pupils, students and adults and accommodate 5 less widely used and taught European languages in the context of travelling abroad.
"Light Me Up!" will focus on Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Greek and Lithuanian and involve the target group in easily accessible language activities and products creating and upgrading basic language skills related to travelling abroad. The partners will use the Tourism Fairs organised each year in all countries and carry out promotional language events in the target languages involving the target group in thematic language activities with native speakers. As a follow-up, the partners will organise for groups of beneficiaries open language courses with teachers for each target language.
The partners will work in close cooperation with a network of travel agencies which offer services for school excursions, work and travel for students, business trips, tourism, etc. This will be the main dissemination channel which will distribute the language sets to their clients who plan to visit one or more of the partner countries both during the lifetime of the project and after its end.
Adult Learners’ Week, 15th - 21st November, 2010
On the 15th - 21st November, 2010 there was an annual (11th) Adult Learners’ Week coordinated by the Lithuanian Adult Education Association. Like every year, Soros International House participated in the Adult Learners’ Week and organized various events: a competition “My beloved teacher”, open lessons “Visit each other, learn from each other” for public and students, teachers of SIH, a seminar for language teachers “Educational video films in a lesson”. During the Adult Learners’ Week we arranged an exhibition of children and teenagers artwork who participated in the EUROCHILD talent competition and language teaching projects’ exhibition “Learning myself and teaching others”. On the 26th of November teachers of SIH Lauryna Butrimienė and Robin Alexander Muck arranged a seminar “Teaching methods and tools for organizing a succesful English language lesson” for the personnel of Pakruojis Adults and Youth education centre and teachers from Pakruojis region. International project coordinator Nijolė Šmitaitė presented projects being implemented by SIH under Lifelong Learning and Nordplus programmes.
The final international conference in Vilnius, October 2010
On 7 October Soros International House organized the final international conference „The Importance of LWUEL for Travelling Abroad“ of the Lifelong Learning project „Light Me Up“. The conference was attended by project partners and guests from seven European countries: Spain, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, France, Cyprus and Lithuania. As well as guests from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Czech, Greek and Bulgarian embassies in Lithuania
The Conference participants and guests were welcomed by Daiva Malinauskiene, SIH Director and Grazina Kaklauskienė, Deputy Director of Education Exchanges Support Foundation.
Irena Raudienė, Senior specialist from the Ministry of Education and Science of Lithuania presented language education policy in Lithuania, Egle Sleinotiene , President of Lithuanian Language Teachers Association focused on the specifics of the less widely used languages and the need for them while travelling, and Arunas Beksta, President of the Lithuanian Association of Adult Education, on the behalf of an adult learner, made an ingenious demonstration of non-traditional and informal ways, which can help to learn the local languages while travelling around the world.
Intriguing presentation on the problems and prospects of multilingualism in Europe was made by Pierre Frath, a professor from Universite de Reims in France.
The main ideas of the „Light Me Up„ project and its achievements were presented by Stanachkova Raya, the project coordinator from Bulgaria. Project activities that took place during tourism fairs in Europe were presented by project partners from Synthesis in Cyprus (representative by George Isaias), from Seducon in Czech Republic (representative Martin Pilarova), from Soros International House in Lithuania (representative Aurelija Babiliute), from Pressure Line in Holland (representative Delia Rashkov) and from Znanie Association in Bulgaria (representative Georgieva Valentina). Later, the conference participants joined in entertaining project language games, which, as a non-traditional language teaching method, were demontrated during tourism fairs in partner countries.
In addition to this project, the participants of the conference were introduced to other innovative projects that aim to promote languages, especially less widely used ones, and their non-traditional ways and methods of language teaching and learning using for this purpose public spaces and involving travellers into the process. NORDPLUS Horizontal Project „Language on the Move“ and Socrates Lingua 1 projec “Learning by Moving“ were presented by SIH representative Violeta Mirinavičiūtė, Socrates Lingua 1 project „The Shopping Language Game“ was presented by KuTu representative Stanachkova Raya. The representative from Znanie Association in Bulgaria shared the ideas on their Lifelong Learning/KA2 project “Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans”.
There was a projects‘ fair and book exhibition organized during the conference breaks. Project partners and the bookshop Rotas presented their products there.
A one- week intensive course of Chech language at SIH , June/July 2010
A one-week intensive course of Czech language for beginners will be held in SIH from the 28th of June till the 1st of July. This course is a part of the LLP KA2 project "Light Me Up – Language Lessons for Abroad".
The goal of the project is to promote LWUEL (Less Widely Used European Languages): Czech, Dutch, Greek and Bulgarian. The Embassy of Czech Republic in Lithuania supported the course by providing their representative Grazina Bikulciute to deliver the course.
All of the participants who will pass the course successfully will be awarded with the CD of Lithuanian-Czech Language Set developed by the project partnership with relevant language learning materials for travellers and with the Certificate of the course.
The partners meeting and Tourism Fair in Cyprus, April 2010
The partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" took place in Nicosia, Cyprus on 22-24th of April 2010. The partners from France, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Bulgaria attended the meeting. The director Daiva Malinauskiene and the project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute represented Soros International House.
The partners participated in the Tourism Fair, which took place in Nicosia on 23-24th of April. Using short and creative language games the partners introduced fair visitors with the project languages such as Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Czech and Dutch. Tourism Fair visitors were glad to take part in interesting games, learn some words and phrases in foreign languages and get some small prizes with the project logos produced by partners. The visitors who played language games and filled in their contact data took part in the lottery to win a Canon printer, which was provided by the sponsors.
During the meeting on 24th of April the partners discussed the results achieved at the Tourism Fair, talked about the updates to the website, the content of the on-line language games and their visual presentation, agreed upon the future plans for further successful project implementation, evaluation and the Final Conference.
Lithuanian partners will host next partner meeting and the Final Conference in Vilnius in October.
The partners meeting and Tourism Fair in Czech Republic, March 2010
The partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" took place in Prague, Czech Republic on 17-20th of March 2010. The partners from Netherlands, Lithuania, Cyprus and Bulgaria attended the meeting. The project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute and marketing manager Ramune Bankauskaite represented Soros International House.
The partners participated in the Tourism Fair, which took place in Prague on 18-19th of March. Hosting partners had to imply a lot of creativity to attract and involve visitors to participate in the language games. Using short and creative language games the partners introduced fair visitors with the project languages such as Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Dutch. Tourism Fair visitors were glad to take part in interesting games, learn some words in foreign languages and get some small prizes with the project logos produced by partners.
During the meeting on 20th of March the partners discussed the results achieved at the Tourism Fair, talked about the updates to the website, the content of the on-line language games, agreed upon the future plans for further successful project implementation.
Next partner meetings will be hosted in Cyprus where the partners will attend Tourism Fair in April 2010.
Lifelong Learning Transversal programme KA-2 "Light me up" project promotion at Tourism Fair "Vivattur 2010" Vilnius, 26-27 February 2010
The language promotion at the Tourism Fair in Vilnius, Lithuania had an enormous success. The event was held in the LITEXPO Exposition center within the Tourism Fair “Vivattur 2010”.
152 participant companies from 21 countries were representing their services in the fair. 15000 people visited the Tourism fair in Vilnius.
During the 2 fair days the partners managed to reach about 800 people who participated in entertaining language games. The fair visitors were able to learn the alphabets, the basic numbers, some words and phrases in four target languages (Bulgarian, Dutch, Czech and Greek). For the learnt word or phrase they received small prizes produced by the partnership.
The project’s stand was constantly being overflowed with people willing to try out the language games, learn some words and phrases in the presented languages and find our about the project. Visitors of the fair were eager, enthusiastic and grateful for the whole activity and product (Language set – CD) that project developed.
Additionally, the hosting partner, SIH organised a dissemination seminar for travel agencies and other interested individuals and organizations, which took place on February 26th. Daiva Malinauskiene presented the participants with the project idea, activities and products. The representative of the Lithuanian National Agency, representative from popular tourist journal, travel agencies and fair visitors, attended the dissemination seminar.
12 agencies were reached, presented with the project and provided with language sets. The network of travel agencies will continue to be expanded.
Project promotion at Tourism Fair Tourism Fair “Holiday and Spa Expo 2010" in Bulgaria, February 2010
February 25-26 the Tourism Fair took place in Sofia as well. During the fair the partners from Lithuania, Cyprus, Nytherlands and the Czech Republic played language games and involved approximately 400 people to take part in the learning activities. The Lithuanian language was presented by SIH representative Violeta. For Bulgarians learning Lithuanian words was a great challenge , but at the end it turned out to be a real fun and their attempts were rewarded with different prizes. Two Bulgarians got so interested, that they enrolled for the Lithuanian language course.
The fifth partners meeting and Tourism Fair in Netherlands, January 2010
The fifth partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" took place in Rotterdam, Netherlands on 12-15th of January 2010. The partners from France, Netherlands, Lithuania, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Bulgaria attended the meeting. The director Daiva Malinauskiene and project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute represented Soros International House.
The partners participated in the Tourism Fair, which took place in Utrecht on 13-14th of January. Using short and creative language games the partners introduced fair visitors with the project languages such as Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Czech. Tourism Fair visitors were glad to take active part in interesting games, learn some words in foreign languages and get some small prizes with the project logos produced by partners. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that many Dutch people know about Lithuania, older generation have traveled our country with campers, young people would love to visit and many people have friends in Lithuania.
The partners discussed the results achieved at the Tourism Fair, talked about the results and evaluation of the first year of the project implementation, agreed upon the future plans for further successful project implementation.
Next partner meetings will be hosted in Sofia, Bulgaria and Vilnius, Lithuania where the partners will attend Tourism Fairs in February 2010.
The fourth partners meeting and pilot fair in Netherlands, November of 2009
The fourth partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" took place in Rotterdam, Netherlands on 3-6th of November 2009. The partners from France, Netherlands, Lithuania, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Bulgaria attended the meeting. The project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute represented Soros International House.
The partners discussed the methodology of the language games that would be used at the pilot tourism fair, the partners participated in the tourism fair organized by students, each presented their own language via games and organized short language lessons to the visitors, agreed upon the feedback form for the language sets testing in partner language schools, agreed upon the framework of the games scenario for the future tourism fairs.
Last evening hosts invited all the partners to the farewell dinner where we had a chance to try Dutch kitchen meals.
Next partners meeting will be hosted in the city of Rotterdam and tourism fair will be attended in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The third partners meeting in Chech Republic, June of 2009
The third partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" was held in Ostrava, Czech Republic on 10-13 of June 2009. The partners from Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Netherlands attended this meeting. The project partners discussed on the project portal’s visual side and content, partners agreed upon the final content of the language sets and developed ideas of the pilot presentation of the partner countries' culture and languages during Tourism and Culture events in Rotterdam.
The second partners meeting in France, April of 2009
The second partners meeting of the project "Light Me Up" took place in Rheims, France on 8-11th of April 2009. The partners from France, Netherlands, Lithuania and Bulgaria attended the meeting. The director Daiva Malinauskiene and project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute represented Soros International House.
The partners discussed and agreed upon the methodology of the language materials, content of the language sets, framework for the self-study materials on the project’s website and follow-up courses.
The host of the meeting organized the outing for the partners on the second meeting day’s afternoon to see the region of Champagne-Ardenne, to get acquainted with the culture and customs of the homeland of world known drink Champagne.
Next partner’s meeting will be hosted in the city of Ostrava, Check Republic.
The First Project Partners Meeting in Bulgaria, February, May of 2009
The first project partners meeting was held on the 4-8 th of May in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was attended by partners from France, Nytherlands, Check Republic, Cyprus, Lithuania and it was hosted by Bulgarian partners. During the meeting partners shared roles and responsibilities, elaborated the work plan for the first year and fixed the date for the second partners meeting which will take place in Reims, France.
