Online Language Support (OLS)

Dear Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps national agencies,

We are thrilled to announce that mobility participants submitted 45 amazing entries for the OLS Video Contest by the deadline of 31 May. This was possible thanks to your help in promoting the contest.

The videos were posted in the language communities, most of them in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages. But there were also entries for Bulgarian, Dutch, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Slovene, and Turkish. They can be found by searching for #OLSCommunityStories online.

A jury composed of members of the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), the public relations agency European Service Network (ESN), and the language school CLL Centre de Langues, which is responsible for the language learning content on OLS, is evaluating the videos.

The selection criteria will be as follows: relevance of the content; creativity – for example an interesting or original storytelling approach; the technical quality of the video; and proficiency of the language used.

The 10 winners of an Interrail Global Pass will be announced in July. Their names will be published in the OLS closed area, in the closed community of each language, and in the OLS open area.

Exciting news! To get our mobility participants inspired to learn a new language, we have published short, animated “discovery” videos that provide a brief introduction to the language. They feature a famous historical figure and provide some interesting facts about the language, its alphabet and its origins, the number of native speakers, and which other countries it’s spoken in. The discovery videos for all 29 languages can be found in the open area of OLS by clicking on the button below.

Regards,

The OLS team

Since we last published this infographic in December 2022, much has changed. At the time, there were 65 000 users and 15 language communities. We now have over 104 000 users in the OLS core area, and over 31 000 members in the open area, not to mention all the extra resources, such as vocabulary lessons for specific professions and extra grammar lessons. See the Tips section for more details and how to find them.

Help us keep mobility participants aware of new features and developments on the platform, by downloading the communication materials for June below (toolbox). Prepared by the OLS team, it contains posts and visuals to share on your social media networks, and an email to send to participants. Make use of both to reach as many participants as possible.

Kindly note that to download the toolbox with its communication materials, you must first login on the EU Academy and then enrol in this course.

Have your mobility participants discovered the additional learning resources? These can be accessed on the “learning community and resources” page for each language, by scrolling to the bottom of the page.

There are dozens of short courses on language and culture. In French, for example, there are introductory lessons for those taking their first steps in the language, lessons on how to write a motivation letter, on vocabulary used by specific professions such as bakers, nurses, travel agents; or on how to understand instructions and requests. For those who are ready to go deeper into a language, there are a multitude of grammar lessons.