What is wrong with language learning? Why is Language felt as one of the least attractive subjects at school? Could language lessons become more exciting and effective? And why not teach Language across the curriculum? These have been some of the questions we have been discussing when reflecting on basic skills in the 21st century school and how to enhance them. The answer we would like to explore is a three-decade-old, yet still innovative learning and teaching methodology, known as Suggestopedia or the Lozanov method. It is the pedagogical application of Suggestology, the interdisciplinary research field experimenting on the power of suggestion in communication to liberate the subjects from inhibitions set to their performance by the social norm and facilitate the untapping of their reserve capacities. In suggestopedic schools in Bulgaria and Austria Dr. Lozanov's methodology was implemented to teach all subjects in global themes with great results (see www.litta.net) long before the term 'cross-curricular' entered our syllabi.Our partnership consists of six upper-secondary schools in Europe; five of them offering general education and one vocational school. We are all facing similar problems such as professional burnout among the staff, low participation in EU and international projects due to lack of confidence in their communicative competence in English, low achievement of pupils in all subjects, low interest in school and a rising number of pupils from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds that need support in fostering their communication skills and integration. All of the teachers involved in this project share the same enthusiasm with culture and faith in intercultural exchange as a vehicle of change in society and education. With three of the partners having already experienced the impact of Suggestopedia as a foreign language learning methodology and one of us being a certified trainer in it, we decided to exploit its potential to boost our pupils' creativity and help them design innovative courses of language and culture to apply in peer-teaching their languages to their partners and schoolmates whose skills in the school's official language need upgrading. Each of the schools will engage from 20 to 40 pupils locally and internationally.This proposal promises to enable us to achieve three main goals that each of our schools has set out to pursue in their European Development Plan, namely the inclusion of our pupils from different ethnic backgrounds so we can prevent early school leaving, the intercultural exchange that will benefit both the staff and the pupils and opening to innovation that will upgrade our teaching skills and the effectiveness of our schools. Before commencing, the participants will have been prepared for this project via an eTwinning project (ID 217537) open to the whole school communities in all project countries; focusing on local and European cultural heritage seeking ways of sustaining it through sharing it. For the purposes of this project, they will be inspired by Suggestopedia to incorporate the tokens of their intagible culture identified as worth-sustaining and worth-sharing in innovative language courses based on culture. These courses will be the tangible products of our Erasmus+ project named Language via Culture as they will contain multimodal cultural and historical texts (stories, legends, myths, quotes, jokes, songs, poems, literature, art) creatively orchestrated along a storyline. We are planning three types of activity; the design of the suggestopedic language courses for each of our project languages that will take place locally and will be open to the whole school community, the peer-teaching of each 15-hour course to the participants from the other partner schools by the school team hosting each Learning, Teaching and Training Activity and the peer-teaching of each language course by the pupils who speak this language as their mother tongue to their classmates from other ethnic and linguistic backgrounds throughout the project duration on a weekly basis for a total of 80 hours. As a follow-up activity refugee and immigrant pupils will be trained by their peer-teachers and the teachers participanting in this project to design their own suggestopedic courses for the accelerated peer-teaching of their own mother tongues to their schoolmates and other peers from the local community. In this way, we are aspiring to take a major step towards multicultural exchange and social inclusion. To assess the achievement of our objectives we are planning to use survey questionnaires, standardised language tests and interviews. All of our products (course materials, tests, evaluative reports and video recordings of our lessons) will be made accessible to the whole eTwinning and Erasmus+ community online. We hope to be able to inspire more organisations to implement Suggestopedia for the transformation of education from meaningless routine to joyful creativity.

"The partnership consisted of 6 secondary vocational schools (Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey and a coordinator from Slovakia) and two special institutions playing an active and important role in the field of vocational training and education permanently (The State Institute of Vocational Education in Slovakia and 21 knowledge from Portugal). They both were helpful to achieve a common project objective to enhance the quality of VET including foreign languages via producing a CLIL in VET portfolio and an international curriculum for a specific subject called ""Virtual Training Company"". All participating institutions entered the project as institutions missing relevant support to launch foreign language in VET as well as common educational contents for training companies. The CLIL approach (Contents and Language Integrated Learning) in this project was understood as a tool for professional development of foreign languages having a power to link theoretical education with practical education while strengthening the position of training companies in the process of VET. The partnership succeeded to create an international curriculum considering different possibilities of participating countries, needs of the open European labour and trade markets. Project activites were open to all teachers in VET and to students who decided to be educated within a training company subject. There participated a big number of students and teachers who produced a lot of materials and tested them in the process. Testing was realized during planned learning/teaching/training activities in international environment and during unexpected remote learning that created some environment suitable to develop international cooperation of training companies in virtual space. The State institution of vocational education as a leading institution was a guarantee to achieve the objectives with the top quality project outcomes. There were held 2 transnational project meetings focused on monitorig, evaluating and planning the project activities, Learning and teaching/training activities were aimed at creating, collecting and testing materials, whilst two of them were blended activities for students and the 3rd one was focused on teachers and the CLIL approach. During interactive workshops participants attended CLIL lessons, tested materials, evaluated results, shared experience with other teachers. Students organized virtual skype and real business meetings to develop cooperation with training companies abroad, invited special guests and experts to discuss with them, attended CLIL lessons, worked on different tasks. We even succeeded to organize an international trade fair for training companies. Our participants disseminated project ideas and results in it as well as in the multiplier event in Portugal. This was held with strict epidemic measures, but it completed the goal to inform participants about training companies implementation hand in hand with the CLIL approach. The project was evaluated by the partners as having positive impact on all of them. Students acquired new Business English skills, they improved their entretreneurial and social skills, gained experience to make international business. They were highly motivated to study by interesting activities and showed better study results. Participating teachers enhanced their foreign language skills, learned a lot of facts about different school systems, international business rules and ethics, acquired valuable experience in creating a curriculum on international portfolio. The project has had an extra added value for partners from Turkey and Portugal where the concept of training companies was totally unknown before the project. Creating international curriculum the partnership created environment suitable to implement the training company subject with the CLIL approach, flexible enough to be used in any country. The fact, that it was made by all the partners is a guarantee of its flexibility and wide usage. From the long-lasting time horizon it will be possible to update and add its contents regarding needs of the market and trends in international business. All project outcomes are accessable on the internet (and social media) freely."

"According to the UNESCO Background Note on the necessity of safeguarding cultural heritage (2013), ""sustainable development and cultural heritage are inextricably linked since the latter plays a vital role in the protection of environmental resources and human wellbeing, especially due to the threats imposed by climate change, globalisation, urbanisation, the world financial crisis and growing inequalities"". At the same time, the European Commission stresses the significance of sustainable tourism. In its Communication, ‘Agenda for a sustainable and competitive European tourism’, it proposes ""sustainable tourism actions ... aiming at diversifying the tourism experiences on offer in the EU"". In this context we have taken the initiative to propose an Erasmus+strategic partnership project coordinated by Greece and run in cooperation with Turkey, Italy, Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic in order to foster our students' awareness of environmental and cultural sustainability alongside encouraging entrepreneural initiative-taking in alternative tourism. Besides, we wish to give our students the chance to make life experiences by cooperating closely with other European students and to contribute to their personal development, the activation of European citizenship attitudes and the development of their basic skills and key competences. All participating schools operate on the level of secondary education with pupils aged 15-18 years of age. The Italian school is a comprehensive school with an artistic orientation. The Turkish school is a vocational high school specialising in ICT. We all have some experience in EU programmes and cherish the idea of cooperating in this project sharing a deep concern in all the issues it addresses. Each school has initiated discussion of an activity with suggestions that have been endorsed by the other partner schools with great enthusiasm. The activities proposed address diverse aspects of environmental issues, i.e renewable energy applications, organic agriculture, environmental interventions, sustainable architecture and urban planning; tangible and intangible forms of cultural heritage, i.e. agriculture, architecture, urban planning, ecosystems, language, art, music, nutrition, folklore, migration, medicinal practices; all of which accommodated in alternative tourist guide plans. For each acttivity there is a coordinator and an evaluator school team. The coordinator collects materials from all schools and assigns the presentation of the final products to another school. As regards European cultural heritage, we aspire to create multi-modal texts such as:- organic seed bags, a seed bombs game, organic orchards in schools - sample tea bags, video guides to spas, the ""Family doctor"" role play, massage and exercise workshops - an e-game identifying sustainable buildings and a photo exhibition of our common architectural styles - a recipe book, role plays presenting local folklore, traditional games, dances, myths and tales - artworks inspired by our cultures - a DVD of a festival of traditional songs performed with traditional instruments and a choir from all six schools - a comic narrating the history of our ancestor's migration paths As for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship, we want to sensitise our students about the energy crisis and other environmental hazards and encourage them to devise business plans aiming at preserving energy resources and biodiversity through innovative applications with a dual emphasis on Renewable Energy and Tourism. We intend to produce:- documented interventions i.e. river renaturation, reforestation, beach cleaning; a film about sustainable urban planning - 3D printed or built models of renewable energy applications, such as a solar car, solar battery chargers, wind-powered kites, pellet heaters etc; an e-catalogue of state and private green enterprises - a website hosting local initiatives in the field of alternative tourism As far as skills and key competences are concerned, our activities aim at fostering our students' personal development with life skills, cross-curricular knowledge and transfer of knowledge, foreign language communicative competence, digital skills as well as 21st century citizenship competences and attitudes. Concretely, we are planning to:- create and apply mini courses to peer teach our languages to our partners- design and carry out our own tourist guiding programmes for virtual and actual sightseeing To sustain our project's products and extend its impact we will make sure that they can be used in the long term as teaching resources across our school curricula. To disseminate our messages and results to our local communities we will hold exhibiltions and other events with the aid of local authorities; to reach the global community we will exploit the EU education platforms and the social media."

In-service skill development, or apprenticeship training, that can be directly assessed is the core of vocational education. The biggest problem in this training seems to be students’ lack of adaptation to working in companies. Those known to be successful at school may turn to be the most problematic students at work. It is widely claimed that students have problems in dealing with official documents, filing, hierarchy, and complying with rules. Thus, companies may demand replacement of students or tend to avoid accepting students at all. Feeling rejected and less confident, student could lose their potential rather than exploring it for work life. This causes excessive workload at schools and drop in students’ employment, thereby having a bad influence in national economy. The project covers 11 Grade students and their field teachers. The other partners outside school will support us with technical stuff and about managing the process. Five student and two teachers from each partner country will join the both mobilities. For the abovementioned problem there are online training opportunities provided by some European vocational schools under the authority of ministries of education. In these trainings students usually start up online companies in the 11th Grade. These virtual startups have the same steps as any actual ones. For example, they have their tax number, bank accounts, digital money, and founding members etc. Company management consists of managers, accountants, and marketing personnel etc. In their online trading with other similar companies, they sell and buy products. Each company has a name, slogan, logo and a specific sector. During this process, students are required to behave as in a real company and keep a record of all official documents. As employees of a virtual company, students become more prepared to work in companies when their apprenticeship starts. Although work-based learning is the core of vocational education, there is no system checking the success of vocational schools in this in our country. Schools seem to manage their tasks on this issue arbitrarily. Some schools cannot find place for apprenticeship, some others hardly meet the demands from companies. The main goal of our project is to create a common platform which will advance our students pre-apprenticeship skills and build a relationship among relevant institutions. Our project partner SIOV, an institution affiliated to ministry of education, applies the abovementioned training successfully in Slovakia. We, under the supervision of SIOV, plan to create a website providing service for online companies at our school. We will conduct the project by letting students in groups start their own companies on the main website. In the beginning there will be companies of three groups consisting of five students. There will be one supervisor teacher for each company. Student will manage most of the process. The most successful company will attend the educational fair in Slovakia and represent our country in the designated booth. The other partners will attend the same event and assist us. By gaining an international experience, our students increase their knowledge for the system to be built. The second educational mobility will be held in our city. We, together with the project partners, will organize an educational fair for online training, and through the help of provincial administration of education we will invite vocational schools in our city. We will make sure the attendance of all relevant parties in vocational education, such as students, teachers, parents, NGO members and businesspeople. We will evaluate the success of our project and try to disseminate it at national level. We will also present our reports and outputs to the relevant department of ministry of education. We will make our website and database available for public use for dissemination as it is currently done in many European countries. We will also promote our project at schools, thereby enabling its integration to vocational education and sustainability in due course. We expect all our students to develop their social and linguistic skills as well as work skills and eventually be more productive and happier in their work life. In this way, they will be indispensable to companies. Eventually, these employees will contribute to national economy and productivity and growth of companies, which is our ultimate goal and desire.