On the 25th and 26th of June 2020, the second transnational meeting of the TANDEM project took place, in which partners have been discussing the current and future steps, this time in a virtual form.
The TANDEM project, an Erasmus+ Key Action 2 project, aims to increase the key competences and employability of migrants by offering a innovative and non-formal learning opportunity in the form of a MOOC, in which migrants are encouraged to use their existing language skills and turn them in an employment possibility as a language teacher. At the same time, through the training and activities, intercultural exchanges and peer-learning with local adults will be promoted, increasing the skills of both migrants and locals.
It is clear that despite the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, partners have not been sitting around. During the last months, the partners have done research as well as the needs and skills analysis, consulting online resources and involving migrants, locals, and language teachers or stakeholders working with the target groups. This will eventually be presented in interactive maps, showing the linguistic diversity and skills of migrants and locals in the different European countries. Though not available yet, the maps will be available on the website: www.teachyourlanguage.eu
A little sneak peak of the results, presented during the meeting, included some interesting points. For example, in Cyprus, the desk research revealed that many migrants are high skilled, even though they might work in low-skilled jobs. Or Italy being one of the few countries in Europe with a higher employment rate for foreigners than for locals, though these are mostly low-paid and low-skilled jobs, so the quality of those jobs might not be adapted to the actual level of the foreign workers. Something else that came forward was the language diversity amongst migrants. Especially in the Italian research, it became clear that migrants coming from West-Africa speak between 4 and 8 languages and they are very willing and motivated to teach some of the languages they know to others. This is important in the narrative about migration and the awareness of the skills and competences that migrants have, which besides linguistic skills, include also learning skills, relational skills, and cultural awareness and expression skills.
The final results will be online soon, while at the mean time the partners will continue working on the project, going to the next step of creating the methodology of Task-based Language Teaching for non-teachers. This will be presented in the second output, an Open Textbook on TBLT, based on the real experiences and feedback of professional languages teachers working with this method.
TANDEM is a 30 months project, funded by the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 – strategic partnerships in the field of adult education.
The partnership is composed of the following organizations:
- Coordinator: Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo “Danilo Dolci” – Italy
- Active Citizens Partnership – Greece
- Verein Multikulturell – Austria
- ClAVIS sprog & kompetence – Denmark
- CSI Center for Social Innovation LTD – Cyprus
- Iberica – Germany
To keep up to date with the project or if you want to be involved, please check our website, the Facebook page or subscribe to our newsletter by writing an email to Vidjaya.thelen@danilodolci.org