UK celebrates completion of GET REAL Lingua

14 February 2009

Tapas, talks and top estate agent at UK GET REAL Launch

From l to r:  Pro Vice-Chancellor Jane Nelson, Co-ordinator Mike Townsend, NAEA

Chief Executive Peter Bolton-King, Bulgarian Cultural Attaché Desislava Naydenova, 

GET REAL’s main writer Gill Outterside

Guests from the University of Wolverhampton, its Business and Development Enterprise Unit, West Midlands business agencies with European links and other invited guests met at the Wolverhampton Science Park on January 22nd to mark the launch of the GET REAL Lingua project.

The guests enjoyed tapas before listening to talks about the development and successful completion of this half-a-million-Euro Leonardo da Vinci language project.

Peter Bolton-King, Chief Executive of the National Estate Agents Association in the UK, was a guest of honour at the event.  He praised the very successful collaboration between Language staff at the University of Wolverhampton and his national organisation, through the work of NAEA’s Head of Training, Ruth Lilley, and welcomed the project’s attention on his profession to the benefit his members.

He was impressed with the scope of the language materials the Spanish, Bulgarian and British partners had produced for this European project.  Not only would the language courses aid the NAEA’s efforts to improve training and qualifications amongst estate agents, but he thought there could be an important market for the language courses in other parts of the world.

Desislava Naydenova, the Cultural Attaché from the Bulgarian Embassy, pointed out that both Bulgarian estate agents and English-speaking homebuyers could use the English and Bulgarian courses to learn the language necessary to conduct property transactions in her country.  From a cultural point of view, furthermore, the courses offered the opportunity for British homeowners to integrate more smoothly into their adopted communities in Bulgaria.

Pro Vice-Chancellor Jane Nelson represented the University of Wolverhampton at the event, and praised the academic, management and financial teams who had devoted so much time to this substantial Leonardo da Vinci project over the past two and a half years, and could now pass on their experience and expertise to other University staff undertaking European projects. 

Mike Townsend, the Co-ordinator of the GET REAL Lingua  project, and Gill Outterside, the primary writer of the English course materials, then outlined the work involved in creating the courses--from the original idea of offering language skills to those involved in buying ‘a place in the sun’ through the filming of estate agents at work, and developing the DVD of exercises and lexicon into training tools for those involved in international property transactions.    

The dissemination event ended with a Spanish and Bulgarian-themed buffet dinner, and the guests had a chance to try out the lexicon and the DVDs in each of the three languages.  

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