Online Language Support (OLS)

Dear Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps national agencies and beneficiary institutions/organisations,

We’re going with the flow this month and bringing you OLS content about the languages spoken in the Danube river countries. That’s because it’s Danube Day on June 29, a celebration of the importance of Europe’s second-longest river. 

You’ll also find new OLS learning material that resonates with our ‘green’ days this month: UN World Environment Day on 5 June and European Sustainable Energy Week from 11-13 June.

From this month we’re changing the order of the newsletter by putting the Toolbox section higher up, to make it easier for you to access. Please make use of it to let your mobility participants know what’s new on OLS and to encourage them to use the platform. You can help us improve the Toolbox service by completing a short, 4-question survey here.

Happy reading,

The OLS team

Help us keep mobility participants aware of new features and developments on the platform by downloading the communication materials for June from the toolbox below. Prepared by the OLS team, it contains posts, visuals and videos 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.

We’re excited to present our three new ‘language basics’ videos for each of the 29 OLS languages. There are now five in total. An easy way to find them is by searching for ‘basics’ in the OLS search field, e.g. ‘Bulgarian basics with OLS’.

In keeping with the spirit of this month’s environmental days, here are three new courses to  help mobility participants expand their ‘green’ awareness and vocabulary:

A2: Can you fix my hairdryer?: Students learn to describe a problem with an appliance, and talk about how to fix it – instead of buying a new one. Available in 29 OLS languages, including Romanian.

B1: Zero waste: can we do it? Defend the circular economy and learn to convince a friend or flatmates to try waste sorting. Available for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

B2: What if we changed our way of consuming? Students will learn to motivate their flatmates to stop over-consumption by not buying anything new (except food and a few other essentials) for three months. Available for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Mobility participants interested in learning a language focused on environmental topics and sustainable consumption, can  try the B2 module Live better with locally sourced and artisanal products! At the end of the module, learners are invited to continue practising their language by joining a discussion in their communities about sustainable purchasing habits. They can participate in the English, French, German, Italian or Spanish communities.

In the communities, mobility participants can discover magical places in the Danube River countries.

• Milos, our Serbian community manager, provides a great overview of the importance of Danube Day in his blog post.
• For tips on where to enjoy great views of Bratislava and the Danube, read about Slovak community manager Andrea’s nice walks in the Slovak capital.
• Which was the first site in Budapest that UNESCO added to its World Heritage List? Read this blog post by Nora for the answer.
• To find the oldest tree in Bulgaria and other UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country, see this blog post by Reneta.
• The Danube Delta, Rope Street and the ‘city with eyes’: find out why they’re worth seeing in 5 places to visit in Romania by community manager Roxana.

Placement tests (see here for the English one) are there to help learners determine which language learning level is best for them, so they don’t start off with material that’s too difficult and get demotivated. They can be found in the ‘spotlight’ section of the Learning Community and Resources of each language (see A below), or by typing their language followed by ‘placement test’ in the search bar. Students can do the test as many times as they want. 

Once they’ve completed it, the certificate can be downloaded from the dashboard,  under the ‘my achievements’ section (B).