A Tagesschau report describes the willingness of Ukrainian immigrants to work and their high qualifications. Many Ukrainians think that they are actually “more qualified than necessary for the job”. However, their professional qualifications can only be put to use if they are fully employable. In addition to the need for professional qualifications, there are also the necessary language qualifications if these immigrants are specialists and managers.
In a team with German and non-Ukrainian colleagues, not only the simple everyday language of the host country must be mastered, but also the technical language used in the team. Many immigrants will not yet be able to keep up with this and therefore cannot be employed according to the qualifications acquired in their home country. If error-free communication at the workplace is important, the linguistic deficiencies must be eliminated beforehand. – This is where the planned services of bluepages gmbh come in, i.e. organising language training with native-speaking experts.
At the top of the video, the focus is on services to promote the competent language level necessary for everyday professional life.
In order to conduct professional discussions with native-speaking professionals, the independent use of German as a foreign language must have been completed beforehand. From this level onwards, interpreting language teachers are no longer needed. Only German is spoken. On the platform offered, contacts are sought for practising professional conversations at a level that is common in companies.
All professional colleagues come into question as conversation partners. This starts with the apprentice as a young professional and ends with the retiree who is still interested in technical discussions. Agile seniors may also be asked by their former employer for help in finding talent among immigrants.
The platform can only be entered with authorisation. The necessary authentication should be secure and simple. To exclude spammers, contact to use the platform must be made via the career networks LinkedIn or XING. There, participants usually already have meaningful profiles that can be linked on the Moodle platform. In order for potential tandem or team members to get an idea of the linguistic capabilities of their counterparts, a presentation of about 3 minutes’ duration should be linked.
In the simplest case, one records the PowerPoint presentation and saves it with audio and video. This is exactly how the video above was created. The MP4 file is uploaded to your own web space (OneDrive, GoogleDrive, DropBox …) and linked to the profile on the Moodle platform. In this way, updates to the profile are possible at any time without external support in order to improve the search for subject contacts.
If the subject contacts for a language tandem or a language group then come about, it should be checked whether this is a win-win situation for all involved. Ideally, the support is reciprocal and free of charge. If the help balance is not even, a bilateral agreement on fee payment can be made. If the parties involved have not known each other personally for a long time and neither the transfer of fees nor the infrastructure for the technical discussions provided is secured, well-known language learning platforms can be involved in the process. The platform Preply, founded in Ukraine, is a good example: https://preply.com/de/blog/tut-res-wie-viel-verdient-ein-online-lehrer. There are many others, e.g. Verbling and iTalki.
Conclusion: bluepages gmbh provides the know-how on a platform so that suitable partners can be found for professional meetings. The service also includes the organisation and moderation of video conferences.
In the pilot phase in winter 2022/23, the service is free of charge. If the platform proves itself in everyday life and is popular, semester fees could be charged to finance the operating costs. The alternative is financing through donations or sponsors. Here are the web links if you want to get more information:
The video above is recorded as a PowerPoint presentation with sound. A tutorial for teachers and students is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I-2IEQcj30