Web-Based Greek Language Courses for Bulgarian Learners and Entrepreneurs

Language education plays a significant role in the development of economic and social cohesion in the cross border area. The difference of language is an issue that needs to be resolved by taking proper initiatives and actions. To this end, it was decided to develop an innovative, highly sophisticated interactive Greek language platform on the Web which will fully exploit the potentials of ICT and new technologies and primarily address two target groups:(i) the Bulgarian population that learns Greek for general purposes (e.g. students of Greek in various Bulgarian Universities) and (ii) the Bulgarian entrepreneurs who carry out business activities in Greece and need to learn Greek for special purposes (i.e. Business Greek) in order to enhance their professional profile and boost their entrepreneurial activities in the region. The overall objective of the project is to establish networks of cooperation across national boundaries and to invest on human capital and ICT to break language barriers through the technology channel. The web-based courses that will be developed in the framework of the project will be offered to the target populations in order to enable free and unhindered access to high-standard educational material available on the Web. The educational methodology will be organized in training pathways and will include the essential skills of speaking, reading, listening and writing in a combination of text and exercises standard presentation, accompanied by a bilingual Greek-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-Greek on-line dictionary and a theoretical back up with the corresponding clarifications, all provided in the mother tongue of the target populations (i.e. Bulgarian). The project also aims at promoting cooperation between research and academic institutions in the two countries, since the emerging platform will be the result of exchange of expertise, know-how and joint effort. Channeling experts in language education in the cross-border area will lead to the development of highly specialized human resources in the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning, an innovative field which exploits the potentials of ICT and new technologies in language education. The project will also help establish a linkage between the educational and the business sector, since its outcomes will create a channel that will infuse innovative approaches in language education to the business field and will thus boost the economic and social life of the residents of the cross-border area, which may be hindered due to inadequate language skills.

The expected results of the proposed project may be summarized as follows: (i) Exchange of know-how and creation of networks of collaboration between beneficiaries. (ii) Creation of highly qualified human resources in the region in the area of language education, well-trained to integrate new technologies and ICT tools in their teaching repertoire. (iii) Synergy amidst the research, academic and business sector, since the emerging language platform may also be exploited by Bulgarian entrepreneurs who wish to improve their language skills in Greek in order to boost their business activities in the region. (iv) Exploitation of available language technologies and tools within the educational setting, since a number of language tools already developed will be employed here to facilitate the language acquisition process. These tools involve automatic correction in the language activities (a feature which will enable the use of the language courses for self-learning purposes), an intelligent spelling checker for Greek, a grammar annotation tool which will provide parts of speech for any selected word, an automatic declension/conjugation tool which will allow for the declension/conjucation of any word appearing in the texts and text-to-speech technologies, which will automatically convert written texts (both Greek and Bulgarian) to oral input and will thus foster accessibility of the on-line language courses by people with special needs in general and visually impaired in particular. (v) Multiple possibilities with reference to language training for specific purposes (business Greek for vocational orientation) or for Bulgarian immigrants who reside and work in Greece in order to facilitate their integration to the Greek labour market.