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Assessment and enhancement of vocational language skills in the wellness sector
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

One of the major economic activities of the European Union is the tourism sector. It has an expansive impact on economic growth, employment and social development. Nevertheless the tourism sector faces a series of challenges, e.g. difficulty of finding and keeping skilled staff or growing demand for customised experiences, new products and growing competition from other EU destinations. In June 2010, the European Commission adopted the Communication, “Europe, the world's No. 1 tourist destination – a new political framework for tourism in Europe”. This communication set out a new strategy and action plan for EU tourism focusing on improving the range of tourism products and services as well as enhancing tourism quality, sustainability, accessibility, skills and ICT use. According to the European Regions Research and Innovation Networks more attention should be given to up-skilling tourism workers and a formal recognition and validation of skills at national and European levels. This holds especially true to where cross boarder mobility is high and many tourism companies experience shortage of skilled workers with a high level of staff turnover. Finding the adequate skilled professionals, in addition to keeping skilled, motivated and knowledgeable staff is key to enhance the competitiveness of companies in the industry sector. On the other hand, many VET learners state that there is a range of free resources to learn English in tourism, but these resources are mainly directed at the hotel sector with focus on the reception and restaurant. Hotels in popular touristic destinations have extended their offers to the wellness sector to offer their guests: manicures, pedicures and massages. Due to the fact that, that hotels work on a global market, the staff in the wellness sector work more and more with international clients and English is quite often used as a common language. Therefore, there is a high need to learn or refresh ones English. Employees in the wellness sector are in many cases not able to attend classes because they may have clients during the normal course times or a basic English course would not fit their needs since does not focus specifically on occupational specific language. "Assessment and enhancement of vocational language skills in the wellness sector" (Assess Well) aims to train and further train individuals in the wellness sector. The project consortium is made up of organisations from Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Together they plan to endeavour on a three year quest to develop a curriculum based on learning outcomes, language learning while taking into account various aspects of the wellness sector, for example: spa management, hygiene, care cosmetics, intercultural competences. The curriculum will be modular in structure and include work-based learning in regards to practical exercises like onsite workshops, job-shadowing, authentic simulations. The outcomes of this curriculum will be based off of a research (desktop and surveys) with the target group: VET schools, providers, curriculum designers; furthering VET institutions; language teachers in VET; tourism/wellness sector employers and employees. In correlation with the curriculum media-based language resources will be developed. About 6 – 7 videos of 10 minutes maximum videos will be developed and include learning outcomes which are based on skills, knowledge and competences for the English language since this is more often than not the lingua franca for the tourism and wellness sector. The resources will include exercises to check for understanding and promote occupational specific language learning for persons who already have a beginners knowledge of English. Building off of the initial outcomes assessment tool for the recognition and validation of language skills and work-based activities in the tourisms sector, this output will be two-fold in that there will be a theoretical knowledge and also a testing portion which will assess learners based on their intercultural competences, ability to converse professionally with customers, ability to follow the correct steps when performing a treatment etc. The tools will enable assessors to define levels of competences. To validate and test the appropriateness of Assess Well, a training concept in which persons can take place in a virtual and/or physical mobility based on the curriculum and resources will be developed. The training will be tailored to the persons individual skills and a training will take place during the project’s lifetime with at least 15 persons for five-days in the UK, not to exclude persons unable to travel the consortium will test a means virtual mobility. An assessment of the skills will be done before and after the mobility to demonstrate the benefits of such a training. The final thoughts and outcomes will be celebrated and shared with key stakeholders in each of the partner countries with at least 30 persons.
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