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Enhancing language education in cross-border vocational education

Overview

Examples of
border regions

Cross-border vocational education

Plurilingualism

Intercultural competences

Languages, disciplines and professions

Cross-border vocational education

Language learning and teaching in cross-border vocational language education settings requires specific concepts and approaches.

During the project, we, the team members of this project, shared many different experiences and expertise from our different European border regions, in order to co-construct the following content. In addition, we carried out a Europe-wide survey on language teaching and learning in cross-border vocational education. This provided important insights into different other border regions and we are grateful to all the survey participants for their support.

Based on the survey results, we developed our guide around the following three thematic sections in cross-border vocational language education contexts:

Plurilingualism

Intercultural competences

Languages, disciplines and professions

Lessons learned from a survey on language teaching and learning in cross-border vocational education

The survey was carried out in 2021 and completed by 139 participants from many different countries/border regions as illustrated in the maps:

About half of participants work as (language) teachers; other respondents were academic researchers, teacher educators, students/trainees and further persons involved in (language) education in cross-border contexts.

What is your view?

Since every cross-border vocational (language) education context is individual, we have prepared 10 questions from our survey for you. You are invited to reflect on your language teaching and learning context. You can also share and discuss the questions and reflections with your colleagues.
What is your view?

Key findings of the survey

In general, language learning and teaching support in cross-border vocational training and teaching programmes is perceived as being somewhat insufficient, according to participants' knowledge and experience. In addition, the concept that English language skills are sufficient in today’s multilingual society needs to be discussed.

On balance, fostering intercultural competences and language skills are at the same time the most important benefits and challenges of cross-border vocational training and teaching programmes. They can also be understood as the ability to change perspectives and connect the language competence(s) to a varying social and professional context.

If you are interested in more detailed insights into the findings of our survey, please check below or follow the link here.



Survey - Part 1: Languages and cultures in border regions Survey - Part 2: Cross-border vocational education and training programmes

References

View references

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Image by pch.vector and by pch.vector on Freepik

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Cross border vocational education

Enhancing language education in cross-border vocational education

Cross-border vocational education

What is your view?

Key findings of the survey

References