Come and go, learn and grow together with Erasmus Plus Programme

For those who have never heard about the Erasmus Plus Programme it is not a secret that it is a great opportunity for learning for young people, youth workers, professionals, students, academic staff, entrepreneurs etc. Within the wide spectrum of the activities that Erasmus Plus Programme offers people from different countries come together for working, studying, volunteering, creating… They learn and grow together. One of the most important learnings for our multicultural reality is learning of foreign languages.

Personally, activities within the Erasmus Plus Programme where I have taken part helped me a lot to improve my English and to learn two more languages: Spanish and Catalan. After all. I really appreciate it. In this article I would like to reflect on the particularities of gaining new language skills within Erasmus Plus activities.

We learn by doing

Within Erasmus Plus projects we learn languages without any desk, board, textbook and pen. We learn by participating in activities, by playing, by doing things. And this learning is interesting, motivating, encouraging and empowering.

We break language barriers and fears to make a mistake

Usually when we learn languages in school, there is a fear of mistake. Then when we meet a foreigner and need to speak to him this fear sometimes becomes a barrier. And even if we know well, let´s say, the grammatical rules this barrier also exists. Communicating in a non-formal atmosphere together with pairs within the activities of Erasmus Plus Programme makes us more relaxed and we start speaking in a foreign language even if we make mistakes.

We learn “alive” language

Language is a vivid matter: it changes and develops itself. In our textbooks we find academic language and when we are in the group of pairs from different countries sometimes we hear unknown words, abbreviations, slang that we don´t understand. Bringing people from different countries together helps us to learn real language that people speak in their daily lives.

Make a step towards Erasmus Plus Programme and be free to learn by doing mistakes and having fun!