With the financial help of the Hessen Campus, an educational cooperation between different types of learning institutions, the support of our IT-department and our heads of school, the English teachers at Berufliche Schulen Groß-Gerau have chosen a language learning programme for a language learning center where students can study English with written and audiovisual material at their own speed and a teacher's assistance. These days, our small center for language learning is growing into a 200 square meter language learning center with a big selection of media and learning material.

Since plenty of our students are from multicultural backgrounds we want to encourage them to see that their families native languages are also important skills that they should be proud of. Therefore, we offer a co-operation with a provider of language certificates which test reading, writing, speaking and listening. With the certificates students can prove how good their skills are.  They are based on the European Framework of Reference for languages and are recognized by employers, universities and exchange programmes world wide. 

A lot of students already have a strong connection to another country. Maybe they have relatives there or they are bilingual or they have spent a high school year abroad. If you encourage these students you might find that they are more than willing to share their experience with other students in informal conversations or emails or they might want to organize an evening with movies or music and show other students why a country or a language are worth dealing with. They don't necessarily need a teacher to organize it, just someone to encourage them.