Language Skills – CSI

Language expert presentation (a Jobpackage Council member)

For the language skills module, and the session about the Cover Letter and a Short Presentation of Yourself, CSI invited one of the jobpackage council members, Spyroula Mavrommati, to deliver it. Ms Mavrommati is a language expert, and she has a vast experience in teaching Greek as a foreign language to migrants in Cyprus. She delivered this session plan with practical and specific tips and suggestions on how to present yourself, especially in a job interview or in other professional contexts. We noticed, however, that during this session not a lot of participants connected and the ones who did were not very active in the discussion. This resulted in only the trainer and the expert to exchange views, which was definitely not ideal. We realised that for this kind of session, it would be better if it was in-person rather than online. Another valuable feedback from this experience is that when a workshop puts the participants at the centre of it (e.g. to present themselves), often the participants do not feel comfortable being at the focus, so it might have been useful to do some more ice-breaking activities at the beginning so that the women felt more comfortable.

Feedback from participant(s) or trainer:

What’s the most important thing you have learned during the workshop?

As mentioned above, during this module and the implemented session plans, we realised that it would work better if the workshops were in-person instead of online, as it would facilitate a greater active participation and interest. Additionally, in Cyprus only very few migrants have a good written and verbal knowledge of Greek whilst the vast majority communicates in English. The fact that Greek is not so well spoken among the migrant community might have been a factor of the low participation in the session plans under the Language Module, even though all the sessions were implemented in English to enable the migrant women to participate.