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Hands-on English for Adept Technicians - techspeak..
Hands-on English for Adept Technicians - techspeak by doing
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
This project involved 12 students selected among the best final-year students of the 3D Digital Drawing, Graphic Design, and IT Management courses. As a compulsory component of the course, internships provide an answer to the need to create working conditions for the knowledge and skills acquired at school to be tested and assessed in a real working environment. The project aimed at broadening the range of this critical part of the students' studies, providing working placements with an international context. These participants did their curricular internship period at British companies located in the area of Plymouth, UK, for 10 weeks.
By testing and evaluating in a real working environment, these internships buffered the transitional impact from school to work. Since that was attained at an international level, with the appropriate linguistic, cultural and social preparation, the skills obtained to prepare professional life acquired an added value as new opportunities arose in the European labour market. The project also provided these pre-working youngsters a solution that makes up for the saturation of the small and economically recessive Portuguese market in their professional areas, thus providing a widening of their professional expectations.
This project combined three needs that must be addressed together in order to achieve an integral and encompassing training that fully prepares students for a real European experience:
- proficiency in the "techspeak" of the student's area of work;
- bridging the school environment to the employment environment;
- providing a broadened international experience, qualification and validation that may extend the professional prospects of vocational students.
Moreover, the students' linguistic skills did not only improve in the scope of the project, that is, in the specific jargon of their working area, but also in the daily use of the language, thanks to the immersion during the 10 weeks of the project. Finally, the contact with a different culture and society, where we stimulated a path towards independence and autonomy, equally contributed to a multicultural enrichment.
SUMMARY OF OBJECTIVES AND CONTENTS
- Young people's mobility (IVT) in an entrepreneurial context;
- European dimension - mobility must be faced as natural and feasible in a period where teen unemployment is dramatically increasing;
- Adequate framework at a cultural and social level and cosmopolitan education - differences must be respected;
- Technical knowledge and mastering of the use of the specific tools of their "trade";
- Linguistic tools - real development of the communication skills in English, both at work and in social life;
- Recognition and validation of the competences - Europass;
- Effective dissemination to exponentially multiply the scope of the project - example of good practices, follow-ups.
The project implied an integral education of the participants through the following activities:
- 10-week technical training acquired in a key area of the course attended (3D Digital Drawing, Graphic Design, IT Management) in a working environment/professional company previously selected and guaranteed by our intermediate partner Almond Vocational Link and approved by our school;
- Previous linguistic training at school; English course during the mobility, organised by our partner AVL;
- Social and cultural preparation through a number of meetings/sessions with the participants to enrich their knowledge of the host country (UK) - habits, traditions, lifestyle - to prevent cultural clash. During the mobility period the students were monitored both by the tutor from the partner agency and remotely by the accompanying teacher;
- Human and personal education, naturally built on the experience of the mobility, closely accompanied by the tutor from the partner agency and remotely by the accompanying teacher.