Frans Oosterholt, Author at LinguaCoP

Volunteer team bis (Teaching LSP – Season 5)

Posted on 15 May 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

At the end of the CATAPULT project, a sustainability plan was drawn up for the CATAPULT platforms: the Community of Practice LinguaCoP and its matching tool Linguaclick. In this plan we unfold two phases for the further development of our platforms. The first phase (2021-2022) focuses on consolidation and expansion and on fundraising to meet all our ambitions. In the second phase (from 2022-2023), we will maximize the potential of LinguaCoP with the help of new investments. In the first phase we will put together a team of volunteers to develop into a professional team in the second phase to support the exploitation of LinguaCoP and Linguaclick.

For which activities are we looking for volunteers?

1 content curation

2 events development

3 publicity

Content curation

In order to remain attractive to the community, it is vital to regularly offer new content related to language training in general and our events in particular: notifications, news in blog posts, topics in our forums, resources… The content volunteers team will strive to identify and share as much content as possible relevant for freelance language and LSP professionals.

Events development

LinguaCoP will organize events around themes related to language training and LSP in particular. The volunteers of the events team help in selecting themes, finding, contacting and guiding suitable speakers for webinars.

Publicity

The volunteers of the publicity team ensure that everyone involved in language training, inside and outside the CoP, is informed as much as possible about the activities of the CATAPULT platforms: the Community of Practice LinguaCoP and its matching tool Linguaclick.

Volunteers can sign up for one or more volunteer teams. The selected volunteers will, if they wish, be presented as official collaborators of the CATAPULT platforms on a special Meet the Team page.

You can leave any questions or comments in a comment on this post, or in this Forum: https://linguacop.eu/forums/forum/volunteers/

Please note, to comment on this post or in our Forums, you must register: https://linguacop.eu/register/

If you prefer, you can also send a message to this email address: volunteers[at]linguacop.eu

Growing Language Skills with Immigrant and Refugee Families: Spreading and Adapting 2Gen Working Practices

Posted on 12 May 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

For immigrant parents in the United States, lack of English-language proficiency can be a barrier to good jobs, healthcare, education and more. Family-school communication challenges, inadequate educational supports or the lack of quality programs for young, immigrant-background children who are dual language learners may also fuel educational achievement gaps. Social service organizations can support immigrant and refugee families through culturally responsive programs that build on the strengths of the home language while also helping grow English language skills.

What does it take for service organizations to grow home and English language skills with immigrant and refugee families, and what positive results can flow from those efforts? What steps can organizations take to provide accessible and inclusive services to families who speak a language other than English?

You can read this brief on Language Skills and Immigrant and Refugee Families here: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/CSG-Language-Brief.pdf

Image by annemcdon from Pixabay

New Cambridge online module helps English teachers boost students’ employability skills

Posted on 26 April 202326 April 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

English language teachers who want to help their students improve their core skills for the workplace can benefit from the new Employability Skills module from experts at Cambridge University Press & Assessment. The short module has been designed to help improve students’ understanding of the skills they will be expected to know in the workplace.

The module comes with realistic workplace situational videos with interactive and reflection activities and a speaking or writing task for students to complete at the end of each unit. There are also teacher notes, student worksheets, video scripts and glossaries for teachers to use in the classroom.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

Creating pathways to employment for immigrants through language learning

Posted on 19 April 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

Thanks to the European Social Fund, the ‘Bremen Integration Qualification’ (BIQ) project provides not only language lessons free of charge for young immigrants in Bremen, five days a week, but also lessons in mathematics and IT, which allow them to improve their maths and computer skills while gaining experience for an apprenticeship. Since the start of the project nearly 900 young immigrants have benefited from these opportunities. Managed by the Red Cross, BIQ is already providing support to young people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Picture: (cc) Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Europe in Bremen

Speaking more than one language opens up additional job opportunities for graduates

Posted on 10 April 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

The UK sees a fairly large proportion of the population speak multiple languages, with 9.2% of the country speaking a main language other than English – according to data from the Office for National Statistics. With so many languages being spoken throughout the UK, is there more benefit to adults that have the ability to speak languages other than English?

According to new research from the University of Portsmouth, students that graduate university able to speak multiple languages will have access to better job prospects than their peers, with German and French being the most highly sought-after by employers. However, with many schools opting to drop modern languages from their curriculum, this could potentially be costing future students the job opportunities that come with demand for multilingualism.

Are some languages more difficult than others?

Posted on 16 February 2023 by Frans Oosterholt

Question from ‘Curious Kid’ Maria Júlia, aged 14, São Lourenço, Brazil in The Conversation:

Some languages seem harder than others. Does that mean that the brains of people who speak those languages are more stimulated?

Are some languages harder than others? For example, is Japanese more difficult than English?

To answer the question, the first thing we have to do is distinguish between babies learning their first language and children or adults learning a second language. For babies who learn their first language, no language is harder than another. Babies all learn their first language in about the same period of time. This is because learning a language is natural for all babies, like learning to walk.

A baby’s brain comes into the world prepared to learn any human language they hear spoken around them. The brain gets the same stimulation from exposure to any language, although it adapts to certain features of the language such as specific sounds. There is no evidence that some languages make you smarter.

In fact, babies can even acquire two (or more) languages together, if they hear them regularly. The languages can be similar, like Portuguese and Spanish, or very different, like English and Chinese – but the baby’s brain can learn them at the same time.

But that changes if you already speak a language and are learning a second one. A language that is very different to the one you already know is going to seem harder than one that’s quite similar to your first language.