MPCE – Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans (Lifelong Learning Programme, KA2 LANGUAGES, Multilateral Projects)
"Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans" will promote the benefits of language learning by raising awareness of and bringing the entirely distant Chinese language closer to Europeans
The project goal will be to smoothen those problems through developing a method and a respective language product for introducing an entirely unknown language to Europeans in easily accessible way. As a result of the project it is expected that the targeted beneficiaries will develop basic skills in Chinese and become aware of the Chinese culture and traditions. This would facilitate their everyday activities and enhance the intercultural communication and understanding.
The project target group covers people whose everyday activities include direct or indirect relations with China:
- the project is targeted at adults who have business and cultural relations with Chinese companies and organisations,
- business administration students who are oriented at future carrier development in business management.
These target groups will be reached through a network of business companies, cultural organisations and educational institutions created as a result of the project dissemination activities. The fact that today China is a strategic partner of the EU lays the foundation for solid cooperation with high number of organisations interested in facilitating their business and intercultural communication with China.
The project activities will be organised as follows:
- Establishing channels for reaching the target group and involving it in the development of the project activities and products at all stages;
- Developing criteria for defining the specifics of the target group. The partners will conduct a qualitative survey in order to gather first-hand information from the future beneficiaries and identify any problematic areas they have experienced in the communication with their Chinese partners;
- Developing a methodology for providing language information in Chinese on the basis of the performed needs analysis. The partners will carry out a detailed examination of the existing practices for teaching Chinese, adapt the specifics of the Chinese language to those of the 5 source languages (BG, LT, IT, PT, NL), choose the lexical content of the associative hieroglyph chains, develop the semantic patterns for providing language information in Chinese through the chains;
- Forming pilot groups with the associated partners of the project and testing the efficiency of the methodology;
- Creating a website;
- Developing a language product based on the methodology and distributing it through the dissemination channels.
- Developing learning/teaching modules and involving the beneficiaries in blitz-courses of Chinese;
- Organising contact seminars with real beneficiaries for receiving feedback on the efficiency of the developed products and reaching new potential beneficiaries;
- Creating a strategy for exploitation of the developed products and their possible commercialisation after the project end.
For the main output – multimedia conversational sets, the methodologists will choose a lexical content of about 200 hieroglyphs and unite them in specially developed "associative hieroglyph chains". Semantic patters enabling the beneficiaries to perceive language information in Chinese will connect the words in the chains. The associative hieroglyph chains will be included in multimedia conversational sets available in Chinese-Bulgarian, Chinese-Lithuanian, Chinese-Italian, Chinese-Portuguese and Chinese-Dutch.
At a later stage, the potential beneficiaries will be involved in practical workshops and go through blitz-courses in Chinese based on the developed methodology. They will be able to share their experience with the project products at contact seminars organised at the end of the project in each partner country and aimed at attracting new potential project beneficiaries.
Through raising their awareness of the Chinese language and culture target groups would develop a different approach towards establishing business and cultural contacts with Chinese companies and organisations in the future. This would also result in an improvement of their professional competence and compatibility on the labour market.
Ku Tu Ltd., Bulgaria, coordinates the project and applicant is ZNANIE Association, Bulgaria. The partners are: Soros International House, Lithuania; Amitie srl., Italy; Formacao, Lingua e estudos portugueses, Lda, Portugal and Pressure Line V.O.F., Netherlands. The project will be implemented through the year 2009-2011 (project duration 24 months).
The work meeting of the LLP KA2 project „MPCE - Mission possible: Chinese for Europeans“ took place on the 13-18th April in Lisbon, capital of Portugal.During the meeting the prepared materials were presented and further project activities discussed: workshops for potential users of the prepared learning materials and contact seminars for representatives from the educational and business institutions working or preparing to work with China.
Director and project coordinator Daiva Malinauskiene and Chinese language teacher Asta Cemnolonskaite represented SIH at the meeting.
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 Association of Adult Education. 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 Lifelong Learning and Nordplus programme projects’ exhibition “Learning myself and teaching others”.
On the 26th of November teachers of SIH Lauryna Butrimienė and Robin Alexander Muck arranged a seminar “The Unity of Teaching and Learning Methods and Tools when Organizing a Successful English Lesson” for the emplyees 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.
In the halfway of the Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans (Lifelong Learning Programme, KA2 LANGUAGES, Multilateral Projects) projectSIH with the project partners created a web page (http://www.chinese-for-eu.eu), has developed models of multimedia conversational sets (CD) and prepared methods of how to provide linguistic information in the Chinese language.
The teaching material is ready: the lexical content of the associative hieroglyph chains is chosen, the semantic patterns for providing language information in Chinese through the chains are developed, short sentences and phrases using words from the associative chains and pinyin tables are prepared.
In the nearest future we will be able to present educational material and conversational sets (CD) to our social partners.
The third work meeting of the project “MPCE – Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans”, June 2010
The work meeting of the partners of the project took place in Sozopol, Bulgaria on the 12-16th of June 2010. The partners from Netherlands (Pressure Line V.O.F), Lithuania (Soros International House) and Bulgaria (Ku Tu Ltd and ZNANIE Association) attended the meeting. The project coordinators Aurelija Babiliute and Asta Cemnolonskaite represented Soros International House.
During the meeting the partners discussed the associative chains, adaptation of the methodology to the target languages, suggestions for the format and layout of the conversational sets, the content and technical possibilities of the project web site and issues of financial reporting.
The next partners meeting will take place in Portugal 2011 March.
The second project partners meeting in Vilnius, 2010 April
The second project “Mission Possible – Chinese for Europeans” partners meeting took place in Vilnius, Lithuania on 1-2 April 2010. The partners from Lithuania, Bulgaria, Italy and Portugal attended the meeting. The director Daiva Malinauskiene, the project coordinator Aurelija Babiliute, Chinese language teacher Asta Cemnolonskaite and VPU student Liu Wanchao represented SIH during the meeting.
Chinese language teacher Asta presented partners with developed initial hieroglyphic chains and possible approaches for developing methodology to learn Chinese. During two days meeting partners discussed about hieroglyphic chains on agreed upon the partnership topics, Chinese language learning methodology development, Liu Wanchao presented the peculiarities of Chinese communication culture, discussed on the content of the project website and language learning materials which will be placed on the project website. Hosting partner offered active cultural programme for the evenings providing partners with possibility to get familiar with different sides of Vilnius life.
The first project “MPCE – Mission Possible: Chinese for Europeans” partners meeting, February 2010
The first partners meeting of the project took place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 3-6th of February 2010. The partners from Italy (Amitie srl), Portugal (Formacao, Lingua e estudos portugueses, Lda), Netherlands (Preassure Line V.O.F), Lithuania (Soros International House) and Bulgaria (Ku Tu Ltd and ZNANIE Association) attended the meeting. The director Daiva Malinauskiene represented Soros International House.
During the meeting the partners discussed the idea of the project, the aim and objectives, workpackages and planned results, partners divided roles and responsibilities among themselves, discussed activities of the first year of the project implementation.
Our institution will have very serious task to perform during this project – we will have to develop a methodology for Europeans to learn Chinese since we have wide experience in teaching Chinese.
To discuss the development of the methodology partners will have the second meeting in Vilnius at the beginning of April.
