DISSEMINATION AT SLOW FISH INTERNATIONAL FAIR, GENOA 14-5-2015

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DISSEMINATION AT SLOW FISH INTERNATIONAL FAIR, GENOA 14-5-2015

Slow Fish is an international fair whose aim is to encourage people to develop awareness about healthy and sustainable fish eating. It was hosted in Genoa from 14th to 17th May. It included a series of events such as fish and wine tastings, laboratories, conferences, documentaries and so on. The focus was on the Mediterranean, that offers a huge variety of fish and seafood that,however, a lot people are still not familiar with. Moreover, the fair also promoted local Ligurian fish,which is extremely good and healthy but little known outside the regional boundaries. Nino Bergese hotel and catering school was invited to actively participate in the event not only because our school is specialized in catering services but also because our students could not wait to put into practice both their professional and communicative skills to advertise Ligurian excellence.Therefore, we took this wonderful opportunity of visibility to also promote the KeySkills4EUHotelStaff project. We were quite lucky because our dissemination was scheduled for the opening day, which was of course the busiest one. Our students attracted a lot of participants standing outside the conference room and handing out the project brochures to passers-by. A good number of the Slow Fish visitors were foreign so the students also had the opportunity to test their linguistic skills in a professional context. We presented the project in detail both orally and with the support of a power point presentation which summarised the steps taken so far, mentioned the partners and pointed out the the project's future evolution. We also provided the links to access the e-learning platform.The participants turned out to be very interested in what was being said and were particularly fascinated by the innovative nature of the project. Among the conference participants there was also a group of students and teachers from a hotel and catering school who asked us a lot of questions about the project and its aims. At the end of the dissemination our students offered the food and the drinks they had prepared to all those who took part in the conference, which became a further opportunity to advertise the project.

Manuela Menolascina

Project team member of Nino Bergese, Italy

AdmirorGallery 4.5.0, author/s Vasiljevski & Kekeljevic.

Dissemination at the teachers meeting at Ekonomska šola Murska Sobota

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Dissemination at the teachers meeting at Ekonomska šola Murska Sobota

On the 12 May 2015 the teachers of Ekonomska šola Murska Sobota had a meeting at school so I took the opportunity to present them the project and all the work that has been done to date. 29 teachers of different subjects such as math, geography, history, economy but also languages took part in the dissemination.

The teachers at the meeting were informed about the project partners, the goals of the project and the results of the project so far. I mentioned the needs analysis report, all the translations done included national dishes and the course syllabus. I also presented them the project website and the e-learning platform, which will be available to anyone interested in the use of it. I showed them the examples already uploaded on the platform and gave some suggestions about how to use them. However, the most interesting part of the presentation seemed to be the smartphone app with all the different suggestions in all the different languages. The teachers found the app quite useful and user-friendly. Furthermore, I handed them out the project flyers to provide them with some more information about the project and asked them to tell friends and other people about it. Some teachers already approached me after the meeting asking if they could upload the app on their smartphones.

Erna Vöröš,

Project manager of Ekonomska šola Murska Sobota,

Slovenia

AdmirorGallery 4.5.0, author/s Vasiljevski & Kekeljevic.

Tourism and foreign languages – Sapientia University in Europe

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Tourism and foreign languages – Sapientia University in Europe

In all respects our region is trying to catch up with western European countries. In regional development, one of the primary issues is to develop local tourism businesses. Szekelyland offers several programmes and organizes events where foreigners, and people who speak foreign languages, are warmly welcome. In order to welcome our guests properly, we must, as hosts, not only provide them with good accommodation and catering, but we also have to provide those who turn to us with full and reliable information. In order to do that, we need to be able to speak foreign languages, or at least, have the right sources which might help us in communicating with foreigners.

As research shows, which has been conducted by the Department of Humanities of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania, the staff of local hotels, guest-houses and restaurants– with some exceptions – do not have the necessary foreign-language skills to be able to communicate effectively with their guests. An EU project, in which the Humanities Department of Sapientia University plays an active part, serves to improve this situation, to develop the language skills of those working in the tourism and catering sectors.

In the project, Romania is represented by a group of teachers from the Department, while other participant partners are from Croatia, the co-ordinator of the project, Latvia, Slovenia, Italy and England. The partners’ primary aim is to develop the general and specialized language skills of those employed in tourism and of tourism managers. This is to be done with the help of a web-based learning platform available in 12 languages, where tourism students and workers can find specialized learning material, vocabulary and sets of useful expressions necessary for their work. A further aim of the project is to prepare interactive maps showing three different scenes, typically visited by tourists (a village, a seaside town and a mountain resort) with all the important points of interest and the most important information related to them. These maps will be available in the languages of the six partner countries, as well as six other languages, i.e. in Croatian, Latvian, Slovenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, Romanian, German, French, Greek, Spanish and Russian. If a foreign guest makes enquiries about any of these points of interest, the user (e.g. the receptionist) can click on the relevant spot, and give them the necessary information, in any of the languages. Maybe they would like to know when the local shop is open, the time of Sunday mass, or how much a ski pass costs.

In these three tourist locations, as well as in a restaurant, several hundred typical questions and answers can be found. These will also be available, in all the 12 languages, in the form of computer software and smartphone apps, so that they can be instantly accessed by users when having a conversation with guests from abroad.

The computer software and the smartphone apps were presented by participants of the project to an audience made up of mainly foreign-language teachers, at the campus of Sapientia University in Miercurea Ciuc (Romania). These teachers were personally interested in the project, while many of them also teach secondary school pupils, who will be future employees in the tourism and catering sectors. Several teachers were present from Kájoni János Technological Vocational School, which offers specialized courses for tourism students. Others came from Márton Áron Secondary School, from Venczel József Vocational School, and from Soros Educational Center. Colleagues from Odorhei were also interested in our project.

At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Zsuzsanna Ajtony, lecturer, the co-ordinator of the Sapientia team, greeted the participants and introduced the representatives of the partner countries. This was followed by a presentation of the project by Hilarija Lozančić Benić, the representative from Croatia. Dr. Ineta Luka, professor at Turiba University from Latvia, presented the results of a needs analysis carried out prior to the start of the project, which was prepared on the basis of the partners’ surveys. After this the Slovenian partners, Erna Vöröš and Dejan Petje, presented the learning material using the Moodle software. It will be open to anyone interested, as a teaching and learning aid both for language teachers and language learners. Finally, the English partner, David Sephton from Primrose Publishing, showed the participants the computer software, the interactive maps and the smartphone apps under construction. The invited teachers put questions to the presenters and were encouraged to try and later use the various materials. The meeting ended with an open discussion.

The piloting of the electronic materials will take place in June, during which we will contact students and different professional institutions, as we would like to know their opinion of the software and the apps. If you would like to test the computer programmes, the interactive maps and the apps, please write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Further results of the project will be reported later.

Dr. Zsuzsanna Ajtony,

lecturer at Department of Humanities,

Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania