Online Language Support (OLS)

Dear Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps national agencies,

It’s nearly 2024 already, can you believe it? OLS now boasts dozens of courses for 29 languages, 29 buzzing communities, hundreds of hours of content, and we are well into our second video competition. Speaking of the competition, have you reminded our beneficiary organisations to promote the contest among mobility participants?

If not, now’s the time! Get on the phone, send emails, release carrier pigeons, knock on doors, and deliver the message. Do whatever it takes to get those students talking about their language learning experience and perfecting their digital skills by making a video about it.

It’s time for the participants to start participating because the deadline is February 4. Follow this link for the competition rules and entry form.

You might remember we had 47 entries in the first competition. Of the 15 winners, the majority were in the Italian and English learning communities (3 each), followed by Spanish and Swedish language students (2 each). The French, German, Latvian, Romanian, and Slovene communities each had one winner.

Now, the big question is which language community will come out on top this time? Let’s aim for 100 entries!

In this month’s newsletter, we’re promoting new OLS video content courtesy of Euronews, some great content from the community managers, as well as Dutch, Danish and Swedish courses. 

Happy reading and language learning!

Regards,

The OLS team

We have prepared courses about entertaining and informative topics in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish featured in Euronews video clips. This is a fun new way for intermediate and advanced students to improve their language skills.

Mobility participants will find answers to questions like what a Foley artist does, how an entrepreneur is promoting street art in a village in France, how underwater archaeology can help us understand our heritage, or how many electric scooters a father and son have fished out of the Seine in Paris. 

The videos are linked to quizzes that test mobility participants’ vocabulary and comprehension skills.

The first two topics per language can be found here: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Look out for new ones every month. 

For the past year, OLS community managers have been going all out to engage mobility participants in discussions on the forums. This month we highlight the efforts of three of them:

Spanish community manager Bernat has made an excellent video: Me presento, gente (I introduce myself, folks). Despite being about a self-confessed camera-phobe, this mini-documentary about his life is worth seeing. It will also help mobility participants seeking inspiration for their entry to the OLS Video Contest. Well done Bernat for also adding the transcript of the entire video in both Spanish and English! 

German community manager Carmelito has posted new threads in the Practice your German forum to help students improve their language skills. Everyone from beginners to those looking to improve in a specific area will benefit from these topics:

• Eine Postkarte schreiben (write a postcard): a classic, old-fashioned way to keep in touch, while practising German;
• Mehr Übungen zu den Fällen im Deutschen (More exercises for German cases): a deep dive into German grammar;
• Deutsche Artikel - Bestimmt und Unbestimmt mit Übungen (German definite and indefinite articles, with exercises);
• Das Perfekt und Plusquamperfekt im Deutschen (The perfect and past perfect tenses in German);
• Nächstes Jahr werde ich... (Next year I will…): discuss your plans for the coming year.

Portuguese community manager Juliane has introduced discussion threads dedicated to Portuguese media: A Guide to Portuguese Radio; Portuguese Newspapers; and TV in Portugal: What's on the schedule? 

They can be found in the Living Abroad Forum of the Portuguese Learning Community and Resources. 

Help us keep mobility participants aware of new features and developments on the platform by downloading the communication materials for December from the toolbox below. Prepared by the OLS team, it contains posts and visuals to share on your social media networks, and an email to send to the 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.

An easy way for students to navigate to a course on the OLS platform is to use the search function at the top of the screen.

Typing in the language (in English) will show all the courses and the learning community in a drop-down menu.

To find the B1 and B2-level courses, which are available for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Just enter ‘B1’ or ‘B2’ in the search field.