Exploring OERs and MOOCs for Learning of EU Languages

Language literacy is an essential life skill for the 21st century. Foreign languages provide access to information which is increasingly available, they ease travel and they are used on a daily basis in training and work. In other words, they help in keeping pace with the ongoing changes of the knowledge society, and in obtaining a professional advantage in labor market as they facilitate the access to multilingual resources. Moreover, exploring other languages and cultures is an efficient way to acquire multiple skills like social skills. These are some of the reasons that justify why multilingualism was and continues to be one of the cornerstones of the European Union's initiatives and policies. But how easy is to cover the linguistic needs of a big number of people who aim either to participate in long-term mobility European activities or generally to live and work efficiently in the global community? The idea of open education that entails Open Educational Resources (OERs) as well as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) looks a promising solution to this problem. Therefore, this paper aims to explore in what ways language OERs and MOOCs could support EU language learners in their long-term mobility activities in order to assess the knowledge of the language used abroad as well as to improve their linguistic competences. More concretely, this paper will first explore the specific scientific area and it will present the findings related to the existence and quality of OERs and MOOCs for the 24 EU Languages. Next, it will analyze the positive parts of the research findings as well as the missing points and, finally, it will propose a series of useful and practical ideas on how OERs and MOOCs could enhance efficiently the linguistic support of language learners involved in European long-term mobility activities.