“SHOPLANG – The Shopping Language Game” is a project funded under Socrates / Lingua 1 programme of the European Commission for the period 2006-2008.
It was implemented by 8 organisations from 7 European countries and it was aimed at promoting the benefits of language learning in general and the less widely used and taught European languages in particular. KU TU Ltd. was promoter and coordinator of the project.
SHOPLANG was focused on Bulgarian, Dutch, Greek, Lithuanian, Maltese and Swedish. The project used the informal environment of the supermarkets in order to provoke interest in the 6 target languages and help people develop some partial language skills in understanding basic information in them. SHOPLANG targeted the general public and in particular the supermarket customers.
The 6 target languages were promoted within language campaigns based on specially developed language activities and games related to the theme of shopping and focused on the products and labels available in the basic supermarkets. As a follow-up of the language campaigns, the partners established resource centers where all interested people were able to find more information about the target languages and countries as well as useful links to language centers and self-study material providers for further learning the target languages.
Results:
- Over 1,300 people were directly reached by the project idea within 30 language campaigns;
- 8 people signed up for courses in the target languages;
- Hundreds of people contacted the project partners and asked for more information about the project and its activities as well as about language courses in the target languages;
- SHOPLANG was featured EU-funded project of November 2007 in Malta;
- A few organisations expressed interest in purchasing some of the SHOPLANG products;
- The established resource centres formed out a very good database of materials about the target languages and countries;
- The project website www.shoplang.eu has been visited by more than 5000 people and the partners have received a great number of positive reactions on its content.
- The project attracted over 35 sponsors and social partners which supported its activities;
SHOPLANG was awarded with the EU initiative “European Language Label” for 2008.