There are few important things about the project that teachers should know before they start gathering students:
♦ since the official language of the project is English, participants should speak it well enough to hold a conversation, which means that they should be at least A2 level. The higher the better. If a student doesn’t speak English well, it spoils the project since he can’t communicate with his/her roommate and other participants, he/she cant communicate with native speakers and thus can’t benefit all project’s activities.
♦ teachers are responsible for their students for the whole stay at the project. We, as organizers, are not responsible for participants. It’s the teachers who come with their students that take full responsibility for them, which means making sure they attend morning, afternoon and evening activities, that they obey project rules and that they go to bed at set time.
♦ students will be accommodated in rooms in mixed nationality manner i.e. no two students from the same country in the same room.
Our project is aiming at teachers who really care, teachers who really want their students to learn something. Learn a language … and not just “paper” language i..e grammar definitions, idioms , grammar structures, grammar tenses but be able to speak the language freely, without being ashamed or afraid.
Our project can help teachers show their students that if they can speak a language, especially English, there are no borders for them, they can live, work, travel and have friends wherever they want.
INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE Project is an interesting alternative to traditional school trips which don’t deliver many benefits for students, since most of the trips is within participants mother country and the programme of such trips usually includes visiting museums and other “attractions” which don’t really interest teenagers. Even when they go for a school trip to England, they don’t have many chances to practice their English since everything is arranged for them. Even when they are hosted by a family in England they don’t have many chances to talk to the family … what can 16 year old teenager talk about with adults that are complete strangers …?
All the students which participated in the project in the recent years agreed on one thing – they all said that it was the best week of their lives, they said that they expected another boring camp with uninteresting workshops, dull activities and generally nothing exciting, but at the end of their stay they all said that they were surprised by how great experience it was for them. You can read some students essays in the section called OPINIONS. Your students will be grateful to you for taking them to our Project …. I’m more than sure of that.
Our project is different from others. We really want teenagers to benefit something from the project, we want them to practice their English by talking to their peers from other countries, which is much easier and nicer than talking to adults which you don’t know. We want the process of learning a language to be “invisible”, nice and different from school way … The participants will be obliged to speak English almost 24 hours a day because they will have most activities in a mixed nationalities groups, even their roommates will be from different countries … so English will be in the air all the time. Students will be allocated in rooms in a mixed manner i.e. no two students from the same country in the same room e.g. there will be Croatian student with Romanian student or Italian student with Latvian student etc. This is one of the biggest advantage of this project. Of course boys and girls will be in separate rooms.
All the activities put an emphasis on the ability of speaking, which is the most difficult to master, we won’t push on writing, reading and grammar much, since they have enough of that back at school. Students will have to work in a mixed nationality teams. All the activities ( language workshops, afternoon activities and evening activities ) are designed to make students cooperate with each other, socialise and practice their English.
All the activities are led by native speakers. All students which took part in the project in recent years agreed that the language workshops were very, very interesting, very different from what they did at school and that they enjoyed them very much.
All this will help the participants break the barrier of shyness in speaking English, which is a great problem for some people, especially for those taught “paper” English.
Apart from language workshops we will also organise other activities (see more info in page INFO)
Apart from creating for teenagers an excellent opportunity for speaking English, our project grants participants something more, something which is more important … as a result of participating in our project teenagers will have a chance to see that although their peers inhabit a slightly different reality and speak a different mother tongue, they are very much alike; they listen to similar music, they are inspired by the same role models, they are facing similar problems, they have similar dreams etc.
Participation in this project makes the teenagers more tolerant and helps them overcome all prejudices against other races and nations, they also break their stereotypes about other cultures. They learn to respect other nations’ cultures and other people’s opinions, through the activities they learn to cooperate with other people. Through participating in our project, teenagers will make international contacts, which could turn into long-lasting international friendships. We know that from our experience, we see that happening every round, it always works like that …
The INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE project is also a great opportunity for teachers to meet teachers from other countries, which can result in fruitful cooperation and exchange of ideas. Such personal contact is far better than mailing and Skype contact which is popular with those EU programmes. It can also be a great continuation of online cooperation which are popular nowadays, when students contact each other within some e-twinning programmes.
There is another important thing worth to mention. Participating in our project doesn’t mean any bureaucracy for the teacher … We know that you have a lot of work at school so we simplified the process of registering to the project to minimum. In order to register your group you just need to send us 2 documents: “Application Form” and “List of Participants” and that’s it, nothing else. There is no more papers to do … no tones of documents which are required for ERASMUS+ projects … Teachers who took part in the project in recent years said that the amount of work with our project compared with those European funded programmes is a piece of cake …
One of the main duties of a teacher during the Project will be guarding his/her students during whole stay in Croatia/Slovakia/Poland ( making sure they are present at the morning, afternoon and evening activities, making sure they go to bed at set time) since they will be responsible for their students during the whole stay at the Project.
The price for the project doesn’t include transportation to and from the hotel. It also doesn’t include insurance for participants. All these will have to be managed by a teacher and paid separately by students. If you live far from Croatia/Slovakia/Poland and decide to come by plane we can arrange a transportation for your group to and from the airport. If you decide to come by train we can also arrange transportation to and from the train station.
The best thing for teachers about our project is that there is no bureaucracy involved in the project . Only 2 documents are required to register a group to the project i.e. only 2 x A4 sheets of paper and that’s it , no more papers …. What a great difference when compared to ERASMUS+ or old COMENIUS where there are tons of papers required to register and then to settle the project, How many sleepless nights and overtime hours at home …… If you ever experienced ERASMUS+ or COMENIUS you’ll be surprised how easy it is to register group to INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE Project ……
If you wish to obtain more specified info about the project, don’t hesitate to mail us. We will answer all your questions. All the contact info can be found in CONTACT section.
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