MONDO Consulting

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MONDO Consulting Training
www.mondo-consulting.ro Tel./Fax. [phone]
51 20 (0040) 21 325 13 23 e-mail
mondo_at_mondo-consulting.ro mondo_cons_at_yahoo.com
ROMANIA
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Romania - Quick Facts
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Short Presentation
Area 237,500 sq. km (91,780 square
miles) Population aprox. 22 million, 55 lives
in urban areas

• 89.4 ethnic Romanians, orthodox
• 7.1 Hungarian
• 3.5 other minorities

Location South-Eastern part of EuropeNorth of
the Balkan Peninsula
Capital Bucharest - the biggest business and
financial centre of the country
Ranking 11th place among European nations in
terms of size.It is the largest country in
Central and Eastern Europe, after Poland.
Neighbours Hungary on the North-WestUkraine on
the NorthRepublic of Moldova and the Black Sea
on the EastBulgaria on the SouthYugoslavia on
the South-West
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Official Language Romanian Latin
alphabet. It is part of the Romance language
family.
Widely spoken languages English, French, German,
Hungarian.
Education mandatory from ages 6 to 14
State education system includes -
primary - secondary - higher education
Romania has always had a strong reputation in
science and engineering. Private education
system, developed after 1990.
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Welcome to the LLW Project Meeting !
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Lets see who initiated the project !
Language Learning Ware (LLW) project has been
initiated by Global Input, Italy, in consortium
with the American University in Bulgaria MONDO
Consulting Training, Romania Centro de
Estudios Ponce de Léon, Spain and
Euro-Projectservis s.r.o., Slovakia.
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Which is the main idea of the project?
The Language Learning Ware project envisages the
idea that same language is used in many different
situations in life, and each situation has its
specific ways to be described and dealt with. So
is the process of teaching and learning of the
language. LLW project, therefore, intends to
discuss and formulate a set of interactive tools
for didactical learning and training of foreign
languages, so as to expose the learner to the
different uses and applications of the same
language in everyday life situations.
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The Development of the project
The aim of this project is to gather
research and discuss ideas from various
participating partners of European countries in
the planning stages of a didactical language
teaching and learning system. These modules
are to be complimented by developed final exams
certified by the European Union. This system
is to be designed to maximize the learners
participation in the various mental processes
involved in learning. Each partner is to be
selected in response to the individual aspects of
the material to be designed.
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The testing sesion took place at DIMITRIE LEONIDA
Collegium

• The 22 students chosen for this project are in
  the 11th grade, advanced level of English. They
  worked in pairs for most of the tasks, but they
  did group work, too.
• The material uses a simple language (normal for a
  preliminary level) and it is structured in a very
  simple way, in five sections that have gradual
  difficulty and deal with different types of
  exercises multiple choice, short answers,
  true/false, full sentence answers and writing
  messages. The revision test gives the students a
  self-assessment and make them aware of their weak
  points. Furthermore, each of the five sections
  has a completed example so that the students
  should be acquainted with their tasks

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Here there are the persons who participated in
the testing phase The teacher, Ms. Ioana Manta
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How did the students reacted?

• At first, the students were surprised to see a
  model and considered the completed example as
  being useless. They also tended to skip this
  part, being eager to answer the questions in
  their example. Yet they got used to this new
  method and finally agreed that a training level
  as they called it, using a term from computer
  games was not a waste of time.
• Also, being given the students age and the
  novelty of this project, their impatience was
  normal. Therefore the fact that they were
  supposed to follow some stages while doing the
  tasks seemed a little boring. But when the
  students understood that some of their wrong
  answers were due to not having looked at the
  picture or not having read the questions
  carefully, they reconsidered those steps and
  began to pay more attention to what they were
  doing.
• In the first section, Multiple choice, the
  students had to choose the best answer of the
  three given. This type of exercise was not a new
  one for them and they didnt have much difficulty
  in accomplishing the task. Even if they didnt
  understand some words or they werent sure which
  the best answer was, they were able to leave out
  the wrong items.
• As for the second section, Short Answers, there
  were some problems at the beginning, because the
  students tended to give full answers and to add
  farther information that had not been required.
  This section, together with section four, Full
  Sentence Answers, helped the students realize the
  difference between the two concepts. It was quite
  an exercise of discipline, since the students
  had to do exactly what they had been asked for,
  nothing less, nothing more.

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Here are the students
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The True or False Session

• For the True/False section, the students were
  supposed to read the conversation carefully and
  look for specific information.
• If multiple choice exercises, deciding whether a
  statement is true or false or giving short/long
  answers to some questions were not new tasks for
  the students, section five Message Writing made
  them acquainted to writing a memo or an e-mail.
  The latter was known and used by most of them on
  the Internet, while the former was a real
  novelty, both as name and as concept. Their task
  here consisted in having to decide what kind of
  information they should include, what style and
  tone they should use when writing a memo or an
  email, but it was also an exercise that checked
  their spelling and punctuation. They were
  supposed to carefully read the conversations at
  first for general understanding and after that
  for specific information and details.

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Key Benefits

• Summarize the key benefits provided by the
  product, service, or idea being promoted

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• Being totally different from what an ordinary
  textbook means, this new type of material has
  drawn the students attention and they have
  become more interested in learning English. The
  pictures and the contexts presented here have
  given them the opportunity to see what business
  means or what a secretarys job is, for example.
  The conversations have taught them when and how
  to use formal or semi-formal language, how to
  deal with critical situations, how to stay calm
  or how to be polite but ferm.
• Students were encouraged to make suggestions
  concerning the project and to use their
  imagination. They were also encouraged to truly
  act the situations. The pictures and the
  recording show some of these moments, which were
  very funny for all of us. During one lesson, for
  example, since they hadnt agreed whether one
  picture was of an office or of a publishing house
  or of something else, they grouped and organized
  themselves on the spot, according to their
  opinions. They moved their desks, created three
  different companies, chose their jobs in those
  companies and pretended they were working. The
  noise was a problem, but finally it didnt matter
  anymore since they were so excited and serious
  about everything! An important aspect was also
  the fact that they urged each other to use only
  English, which they actually did, forgetting
  about their shyness or inhibitions. They
  obviously made some grammar mistakes but they
  managed to communicate to each other and this was
  most important.

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• They acted the conversations, outrunning the
  dialogues and being very spontaneous. They
  laughed a lot trying to speak English with a
  strange accent or exaggerating. They learnt a lot
  of words and expressions, and they discovered new
  things about themselves some of them are very
  patient and good at working with people, others
  are impatient or bossy. It was very interesting
  for them to see how they actually behave in
  certain situations and they even started to think
  of their future careers.
• Also, they were the ones who decided that the
  pictures are too dull and the next hour they
  brought their coloured pencils and coloured all
  the drawings, some of them even adding some new
  objects (like a bottle of Coke on a desk or a
  picture on the wall) . Beside the funny aspect of
  a classroom like a kindergarten in which some
  teenagers have discovered again the joy of a
  long-forgotten activity, those kids colouring the
  drawings expressed their different personalities.
  A psychologist could definetely tell us a lot
  about these students by seeing their pictures.

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All in all, the students were very delighted to
take part in this project, they learnt and they
laughed, they improved their English by having
fun.
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Further development of the project

• For the testing sessions we have chosen two
  groups in the firs group there were 22 students
  from Dimitrie Leonida Collegium and in the second
  one there were 15 managers.

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The managers who participated in the testing
session

• 1. BUTUCEA CAMELIA (From SC CAMELIA
• 2.COMANEANU ELENA ( From SC IMPEX COMANEANU)
• 3.GHERGHINA GEORGETA (From SC POEME)
• 4.IVANESCU ELENA (From SC MONDIAL)
• 5.MANEA CAMELIA (From SC MIRIANA)
• 6.GRECU DUMITRA (From SC GREMI TRANS)
• 7.MANEA CAMELIA( From SC MIRIANA)
• 8.NISTOR GABRIELA( From SC CUPLUELECTRO)
• 9.OPRI MIRELA ELENA (From SC MIRELA STYLE)
• 10.STROILA ALINA( From SC KAROLINE IMPEX)
• 11.IVANESCU ALEXANDRU (From SC MONDIAL)
• 12.IVANESCU CEZAR ( From SC MONDIAL)
• 13.MARINESCU VERGINEL( From SC TURISM PUCIOASA)
• 14.RADULESCU GEORGIAN (From SC BRIELA)
• 15.RADULESCU PAUL ( From SC BRIELA)

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Opinions about the course

• The teacher of this course considers that the
  course was a success as the participants acted
  the conversations, outrunning the dialogues and
  being very spontaneous. They learnt a lot of
  words and expressions, and they made some new
  friends and some possible business partners .
• Also, some of the participants considered that
  this new type of teaching was a very efficient
  one, and they adapted very quickly as if the
  managers were children and were supposed to learn
  in the classrooms again.

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Some of the managers were very conscientious
they wrote down every unknown word
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What is the idea of the course ?

• The course idea is to design and then to expose
  the learner to differing uses and applications of
  the same language from each module/unit. Each
  individual learning aid acts as verification for
  the language studied in the previously used
  learning aid and as preparation for the learning
  aid to be studied next. The conclusion of each
  pre-lesson preparation is in the verification of
  the studied material before the learner enters
  the classroom. This is to be achieved in one of
  three ways
• Through a website (corresponding to the varying
  mother tongue languages of the participating
  partners)
• By downloadable material acquired by the learner
• This material assigned by the course teacher.

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Which are the target groups ?

• The LLW (Lingua Learning Ware) project is aimed
  at young and adult individuals of varying
  economical levels and possible limitations that
  have the need to overcome the obstacles of
  communication found in the employment market.
  These are to include
• Young adults with incomplete education
• Unemployed young and mature adults
• Mature adults needing occupational retraining
• Disadvantaged individuals with language obstacles
  and/or economic limitations.

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Partners in LLW Project

• Global Input
• Italy

• Centre for European Programmes of the American
  University
• Bulgaria 

• Centro de Estudios Ponce de Léon Spain

• Euro-Projectservis s.r.o.
• Slovakia

• MONDO Consulting Training, Romania

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Thank you very much !Iolanda MihalacheMONDO
Consulting TrainingBucharest11-12 May 2006