Language Learning through Culture & Cooking is a 2 year project funded through the Erasmus+ KA2 Adult Strategic Partnership Programme. Led by Dacorum CVS (UK) the project also brings together partners from Austria, Greece, Lithuania, Romania and Spain to share their knowledge and expertise to create innovative training products which combine together the topics of language learning, cookery and inter-cultural dialogue. The project is aimed at adult learning providers and community development agencies and will provide new tools they can use to enable learners to enhance their learning outcome and through this role in the workplace and local society. There is recognition that when you engage and motivate adult learners the individual results they achieve are at a higher level than would have otherwise been possible. Motivation leads to increased knowledge, increased levels of confidence, increased skill sets, increased social contacts and in addition for migrants an increased sense of being part of the community in which they are now living. Each partner to this proposal has seen in their own delivery the positive results that come from engaged motivated learners. In all subjects taught to adult learners there is the potential to motivate learners. The quality of teaching is one aspect, as is the ambience of the training room and the how the lesson plan is created / delivered. Some subjects lend themselves more to engaging learners and partners have seen cookery and inter-cultural exchange as ones with positive potential. The level of results achieved has a relationship with how the lesson is delivered. What works well could work even better and we always strive for improvement. Partners have come together in this proposal to strive for that improvement through the creation of innovative ways in combining the delivery of language learning and embedding basic skills through the medium of cookery and intercultural dialogue. The latter achieves best results when exchanging all the cultures represented in the classroom setting, whilst cookery can broaden horizons through sharing traditional recipes whilst underpinning key messages around local sourced food and healthy eating. This provides an environmental and health & wellbeing dimension, as well as providing a way into active citizenship. The project will create a portfolio of training materials, guidelines, handbooks and online resources for organisations and adult trainers to draw upon to enhance the delivery of their lessons. They will be written from the perspective of delivery within the setting of language learning for speakers of other languages, whilst at the same time recognising the potential for transferability to other course topics. The adult trainers are the prime project beneficiaries, with through course material delivery migrant communities being the ultimate beneficiaries, though the wider population also benefits through participation in cookery and cultural exchange.
Through the implementation of the project, partners wanted to achieve a better understanding on how we can actively implement the combination of language learning with practical cooking in our already existing courses. With the new approaches, materials and ideas developed in the LLCC project partners wanted to gain also new ideas on how we could enrich our language courses through new medium. By implementing this project partners created useful tools for the target groups we work with, They improved competences in various areas: -KC 1: Communication in the mother tongue -KC2: Communication in foreign languages -KC5: Learning to learn -KC6: Social and civic competences -KC8: Cultural awareness and expression It is mentioned previously, our main aim was to create training material based on cooking and culture for language learning, to implement these in online courses, which consisted of four different modules. Initial purposes was to deliver these courses face to face with online element for trainers however the COVID19 pandemic forced everybody to learn anything and everything in a digital environments. Therefore,the online Tool box of resources provided meaningful resource to work in a project like this to enhance the learning.
The aim of applying for this project was to create innovative ways in combining the delivery of language learning and embedding basic skills through the medium of cookery and intercultural dialogue. It achieves best results when exchanging all the cultures represented in the classroom setting, whilst cookery can broaden horizons by sharing traditional recipes underpinning key messages around local sourced food and healthy eating. The project also created a portfolio of training materials, guidelines, handbooks and online resources for organisations and adult trainers to draw upon to enhance the delivery of their lessons. Consortium created transferable products so they could be widely used.The needs addressed are: Austria work with Labour Market Service (AMS) and the Integration Funds (ÖIF). They learnt how to use the combination of language learning, cooking and intercultural communication in the courses, especially the practical aspect of cooking together. The project partners learnt new concept and ideas of how to in cooperate cooking and culture especially live sessions to make learning fun and interesting. Essentially, the project provided new ideas and tips for trainers how to work with participants in an interactive way.