.If we read the press every day, platforms, instruments and new tools to learn or improve languages emerge.
Netflix, for example, has a channel that helps you improve your languages by practicing watching movies. The TRAVIS App has created a simultaneous translation audio device
Language learning has become an imperative in education. A single language is not enough.
Alejandro Ferrer director of MCM Educational Consulting says that “Mastering a foreign language or several can open many doors in your future”.
The crises make families invest 28% more in their children’s education, according to the newspaper La Vanguardia. One of the areas where investment has grown is in mobility and language teaching abroad.
In Spain, the foreign language is considered one of the most important subjects.
Educational agencies and consultants like MCM Educational Consultants help parents make the best academic and curricular decisions abroad.
This service has a price and, sometimes, it is not affordable for all families, especially if they have more than one child, since the expense multiplies. .
As many experts say, language immersion is where you really learn a language, it becomes internalized in all the linguistic aspects of daily life and it is definitely anchored in your mind.
1. Why invest in languages?
It is one of the questions in education with perhaps the most answers. The globalized world in which we live forces young people to master one or two languages in addition to their mother tongue.
Languages have been and continue to be a degree in training, something difficult to learn if one does not live with natives of the host country, so for centuries studying in a foreign country has been part of the same educational process.
A few days ago the newspaper Mercado published: “Speaking another language changes the structure of the brain. It makes the mind more malleable. A group of polyglots working together will be a group with original thinking”.
No one denies that languages open frontiers and new possibilities and job opportunities that would definitely not exist without them, but as the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou, said in an interview to Aprendemas.com (2002): “language learning is money well spent, as it is an investment in the future of our young people, in particular, and in the future of Europe” and “monolingualism is a luxury we can no longer afford”.
Young people need to learn about other cultures and countries as it makes them more tolerant and open to diversity.
2. What does the market offer for travel and language learning?
While the best option is to immerse yourself in another culture and become immersed in it, it has turned out to be the least economical with the options offered so far. Agencies representing schools, colleges, clubs, camps, paying families, academies… require very high costs that many families cannot afford.
With the emergence of collaborative economies, new avenues are also opening up for languages and families, and Via Families is an example of this, a platform for international exchanges for families and students, without agencies or intermediaries, knowing and choosing the family personally to make invitational exchanges.
3. What does Via Families offer you?
Via Families offers an international network of families and students for language, sports or cultural exchanges, united by common interests and needs, around education, sports, culture or languages.
The possibility to choose and decide where, when, how and with whom to exchange, travel or host a student.
Students travel and learn about other cultures, practice their favorite sports or hobbies and perfect or learn another language thanks to other families like their own.
No one knows better than parents and students what type of family they want, when and how they want to make the invitation or exchange. They do not need intermediaries but only a channel to meet each other: Via Families is the simple channel available for international education.
4. How does the collaborative economy work in languages?
Via Families Community
Like many other collaborative economies that are in vogue (AirB&B, BlaBlaCar or Home Exchange) it is based on helping each other, saving intermediaries and agencies, lowering costs as much as possible, based on mutual needs and interests.
In just 3 steps you can contact whoever you want: registering, creating a profile and contacting. Nothing could be simpler, safer, easier and more economical. Families have the option to contact anonymously through the platform’s messaging service until they decide to give their details.
Guarantee, security and confidence
Validate your identity by associating your profile to the social networks Facebook and LinkedIn (this will remain hidden), belong to an association, school, federation or company, upload a legal document to your profile… everything adds up in Via Families to prove the validity of your identity.
In addition, Via Families already has the support of several sports federations such as the Catalan Tennis Federation and the Spanish Tennis Federation, French Tennis Federation South, ELFAC Large Families of Europe, or Romeu Group. All of them have joined Via Families to endorse the profile of their employees, members or associates. One more guarantee of confidence for the rest of the families.
