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Love Language & more! Attract Participation and Increase Motivation of Young Male Language Learners

Investigations exploring gender effects on adult foreign language learning state the fact that language uptake is imbalanced between men and women. Especially among young male adults, language learning is considered as not being “cool”, and therefore this misconception leads to reduced participation in a wider society, reduced access to information, reduced chances on the European labour market.The recommendations of the UNDP Language Training Network include “introduction of special measures for positive discrimination in order to make foreign language acquisition more attractive for young male adults... projects in these areas would have a positive impact to encourage the participation of marginalised groups in language learning programmes.”Our need analysis for this TOI proposal revealed that this situation is also true for the importer countries: In Portugal, the number of women attending higher education is higher than the number of men. In Slovenia, figures for the University Maribor show the same situation, and also in Slovakia the situatin is similar.The overall objective of the project is to enable young male adults with particular “foreign language learning resistance” to establish their “love for language” by increasing their interest and uptake of foreign languages and to increase their participation in the life long learning society. We will transfer the results of two innovative language projects: “Love Language! Attract Participation and Increase Motivation of Young Male Language Learners” (www.love-language.org) from the Czech partner into Portugal, Slovenia, and Slovakia“Talk with me! The Social way to Learn a Language” (www.talk-with-me.eu) from the Slovenian and Slovakian partners to Portugal.The main products will beTrainer’s Handbook “Love Language!” will increase the curiosity to learn a foreign language, increase the motivation of foreign language learners and keep them interested in order to prevent their drop-out.The Tool Box “Love Language!” will serve all language and vocational qualification institutions and trainers. It can be used, because of their modular structure, for a wide variety of measures and interactions.“Didactic Guidelines and Tutorials” will show how to introduce virtual 3D learning environments into existing teaching schemes, in relation to the country specific demands and needs, and to the specific learning cultures.The added value lies exactly in this combination described above, because the overall attractivity of the Love Language materials for “resistant” male language learners will be further increased by the possibility using Second Life as a virtual 3D interactive communication environment. The implementation will be assisted by Strategic Advisory Committees in each target country, consisting of major stakeholders in the field of vocational and agricultural education. This will guarantee positive long-terms impacts and the sustainability of the project after the funding phase.
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