Innovation in Language Learning

Studies carried out by the European Commission show that linguistic and cultural barriers considerably hamper commercial transactions. European companies are therefore missing out on major opportunities. The SIMILAR project was born of both this observation and surveys carried out by partners from several Belgian and French universities in the field over the last ten years.

Since 2019, the project has been financially supported by the INTERREG V France-Wallonie-Flanders cross-border cooperation programme. This European project is coordinated by HOGENT School of Higher Education (Flanders-Belgium), in collaboration with the University of Lille (France), the University of Mons (Wallonia Belgium) and Syntra West (Flanders-Belgium). It is supported by many associations from the food industry, catering schools and employment agencies.

The project aims at offering an effective and innovative linguistic and cultural support strategy to facilitate a company's entry or expansion into a new cross-border market, improving the multilingual and intercultural skills of SME employees and jobseekers in the regions concerned and thereby facilitating contacts between the various professional players in order to stimulate cross-border employment and ensure a better match between supply and demand.

The first step was to carry out qualitative and quantitative field surveys in order to draw up a precise inventory of good practices and linguistic and cultural needs among the players involved in the pilot food sector.

Secondly, bilingual learning modules on emblematic products such as chocolate, beer, wafels and cheese were developed, including multilingual glossaries, cultural background information and video interviews with local manufacturers. In addition to the language modules, CSR and law modules provide useful cross-border information and a bilingual booklet of 30 cross-border culinary curiosities was written to promote regional specialties.

Finally, online and face-to-face training has been provided to schools and local manufacturers over the three regions (Flanders, Wallonia, Hauts-de-France).