In a month’s time the International House London, an established language school with over fifty years of experience in providing language courses and teacher training programmes, will be holding its fourth Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference. Their spacious and fully-equipped campus near Covent Garden welcomes you on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 November to discuss the teaching of languages for business purposes and the usage of technology in the classroom –£50 for the two days. Friday’s talks, delivered in English, vary from sessions on technology in the language classroom and tips on how to cope with students unwilling to cooperate in communicative learning classes, to neuro-linguistic programming techniques to boost language learners’ confidence. Saturday’s workshops, delivered in the delegates’ target language, focus on Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish language teaching. Read More

(Part I was published on 28 July)

Managerial and intercultural skills

Doing business with Latin America has a project based approach. It fosters integration between content and language, but involves the learning of skills as well. Moreover, depending on the stress that is put on the economic context or the cultural component, these skills can be defined as managerial and intercultural.
First of all, students should apply knowledge from diverse disciplines in order to solve multidisciplinary problems. A good simulation of real practice, where managers are supposed to accept responsibilities and to combine different layers of information, going from facts and figures to a wide range of human interest topics. Read More

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is a widely spread concept: it involves teaching a curricular subject through the medium of a language other than the one normally used by the teacher/lecturer and the students.

The University College Brussels (HUB) recently implemented ‘Doing Business with …‘, a assignment (3 credits) for Master students in Commercial Engineering (first year). Various economic contents are being offered while submerging students in a foreign language context.  Students can focus on quickly growing economies, transition economies, underdevelopment and middle-income economies. They will choose from the 4 languages offered at bachelor level: English – ‘Doing Business with Middle East-East‘ (including India), German – ‘Business with Eastern Europe‘ (mainly Russia), French – ‘Business with the French-speaking part of Africa‘ (e.g. the former Belgian colony Congo) and Spanish – ‘Business with Latin America‘.
Let’s take a look at ‘Doing Business with Latin America’. Spanish is only exceptionally taught at Belgian secondary school level. Most students have to start from scratch at the beginning of their university career. Hence, creating the best pedagogic setting for CLIL is easier said than done. The course consists of three parts: Read More

You will find case studies on Study Trips on the MOLAN website.
Let me first introduce our own CS to you:
Cross Cultural Competences Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel (HUB – Belgium)
What is it about? Travel courses to London, Paris, Madrid or Berlin for Dutch-speaking students of the Faculty of Economics and Management.
Each travel course is composed of visits to multinational companies organized by tutors, of similar company visits organized and prepared by the students themselves, of cultural activities and of individual reports/abstracts written in a foreign language by each participating student.
The CCC course targets students who do NOT take part in the Erasmus exchange programme. It enables them to get acquainted with a foreign business culture while developing their foreign language skills. It increases their employability, boosts the tutors’ commitment, raises awareness among policymakers in the institution and within companies. And finally it’s the very fundamentals of networking between universities, students and the world of business
Languages covered: English, French, Spanish or German Read More