ERASMUS (Grado Medio)

Here we have the experience of Iker about his Erasmus placement in Dublin:

My name is Iker and I’m currently  in a traineeship in Dublin. The Company is an official test center for English that is a requisite for students and professionals who wish to study, work or migrate to an English-speaking country.

 

The exam is an English language proficiency test that includes writing, speaking and hearing skills. I usually receive the candidates when they arrive to the exam and pick and review the required documentation. Once the exam is completed, I carry out the process of reviewing , scanning and ratings  transcription. On the other hand, I also participate in the process of sending and receiving exams from educational centers which include physical visits to the post offices.

 

This is certainly a great experience and an opportunity that allows you to gain experience in the marketplace combined with an international practice that allows you also to continue learning the language intensively. I’m enjoying Erasmus + very much and I fully recommend it.

We are sure that this has been a very joyful experience!

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MARKET PLACE 2023

This year has been the 6th Edition of the EPJ MARKET PLACE. The companies created for the ocassion have been: Maclaermas, Oriently, Gea, Sunmobile, Healthy Ways y Flasback.

Here are some of the thoughts about preparing for the DAY:

MACLAERMAS
Since the beginning of the course, we have been working towards the exciting Marketplace day for our companies. It has been months of learning and preparation to get everything right. It has been a bit overwhelming with time, exams and assignments, but in the end we have managed to do our best and it has been successful.

GEA:

We started organizing the MarketPlace two weeks before the presentation. At the beginning we didn't know where to start, this is because we didn't have any past experience. It was very important working as a team and having good communication between all the members of the group. This was very important because we agreed on a lot of ideas. 

When we started with the projects at first we felt that we didn't have enough days to finish on time. But this didn't happen because we made small tasks every day and we finished on time.

On the last days, we made huge progress in the stand like: posters, activities and games, uniforms, we prepared sweets as the prices.

In conclusion, preparing the MarketPlace was very challenging but very rewarding. We worked as a team in every task and objective and it was difficult but we did it.

SUNMOBILE:

Regarding to the preparation of this Marketplace 2023, I could tell you that it was a great challenge for all lof us due to we prepared it in a short time. The reason of this is because the fair was pretended to be celebrated at the end of may, but the plans suddenly changed to a few weeks sooner. In the following days, after we were noticed about that change, each group worked on many original ideas to offer, for example, in the group of the company "GEA", they used some classes to create their game of roulette with questions, the group of "Healthy Ways" was making posters with domestic animals and in "Flashback", they managed their social networks to make themselves known at the fair. In general, all my classmates were pretty nervous due to they wanted to make a good impression in this event, but in the same time, we were all excited!

And here we have some thoughts after the DAY:

ORIENTLY:
The market place day was a funny one. We finished the last details and after that, the fair started. At first, we were nervous, because we didn’t know how it was going to be, but then, we had fun explaining our idea and playing the game with the people that were coming to our stand. Although it was a great day, we were also very tired because of standing all day. At the end, we had to clean up the mess we made, which by far was the worst part. To sum up, we consider it was a great experience and we hope that the school will continue doing it every year. 

FLASHBACK:

The Market Place has been a great experience and opportunity for us. We believe that it has been very enriching to improve our communication skills and develop our creativity.

We liked having the opportunity to meet people from the different classes in the school, and without a doubt, we really liked that they participated so much in the activities.

It was well worth having dedicated so many hours of work to the Market Place, we were very satisfied with the results obtained at the fair and we saw all our efforts rewarded.

Without a doubt, it is a unique experience that we will not forget.

What we can say, without a doubt, is that is was a GREAT SUCCESS!!

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ERASMUS+ Experience (Grado Superior)

 It has been a month already since Miguel and Celia left Spain in order to start their internships abroad. Here it is what they have to say about it:

Hi I'm Miguel, I am currently doing my internship at the British Chamber of Commerce in Hungary. My experience here has been nothing but exceptional at the moment, experiencing how business is runned in another country is really mind-opening and broadens your knowledge in every single aspect. From managing the chamber's email to organizing events for the members and non-members to give them a platform to expand their business. As far as life outside work, everything is totally different but still impressive, meeting people from places I never knew existed and the willingness there is to make new friendships is something everyone should experience. I have only great words for this experience, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in widening their knowledge in international businesses and moving out of their comfort zone. This experience makes you grow professionally and personally.

Here is Celia's experience:

My experience doing an internship in another country it's been very good, but sometimes it's strange. Coming to another country alone, with another language, another culture and even another currency.

Maybe the worst part of thi is feeling alone here, but in my case I don’t feel alone most of the time. Sometimes I really enjoy being alone but I’m not alone here, my flatmate for example is a very good girl and we have fun together, even my Turkish friends at the office, we have so many laughs together.

I really enjoy being here in Poznan although the weather is still a bit unstable (today we have a maximum temperature of 7ºC and tomorrow we will be at 16ºC).

At first I thought that the language would be a problem, maybe because I was very shy to talk in English because I thought my level was not very high, but when I arrive here that was not a problem because I can have normal and fluid conversations with almost everyone, but there are sometimes that I don’t know some words and try to explain it with another words, or even invented a word, like ‘place for the planes’ to say ‘airport’ or ‘forest’s policemans’ to say ‘forestry experts’ and we always have lots of laughs.

I’ve met new friends from a lot of countries such as Colombia, Germany, China, Indonesia, Turkey, France and some Polish people, and we had a very good time together.

Very soon they'll be back and they will tell us all about their stay abroad!

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FINSPAIN #TIB: SHOPPING IN OULU AND MADRID (PART III)

Third videoconference session: Final presentation

Finally, after all the work together, we had the chance to present our final result to the rest of the teams and teachers participating in this proyect. 

We explained our topics and commented on the differences and similarities between the shops in Spain and Finland. We were nervous but we are proud of our result.

Afterwards, another team gave us feedback and it was very interesting and helpful hearing their opinion.

After our presentations, we created a word cloud:

Evaluation

Once we had finished our presentations, we had a discussion session in class evaluating our project and giving feedback about our experience and how to improve it. We also talked about everything we learned working on FinSpain TIB.

Here are some of the ideas we shared about what we learned. If you click on the image you can access all the information.

 

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FINSPAIN #TIB: SHOPPING IN OULU AND MADRID (PART II)

We continued our international adventure during the whole month of March. Our next steps were:

Gathering information: Field work

Friday 3rd of March we used our 2 hours of English class to go to the shops and gather information about prices, products and schedules. 

We took pictures of the shops and  different products.  Some of us also talked with the workers and asked for information about the products. It was fun!

Afterwards we prepared a presentation that we shared with our teammates in Finland through the common Teams Channel.

Second videoconference session: working together

In the second session we presented and combined the information that each subgroup had researched and then we compared the businesses, their location, their opening hours, etc. We split up the slides, checked the length of the presentation, and rehearsed.

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ERASMUS 2023 (Medium Degree/Grado Medio)

This past Saturday, our Administration Assistants going on an Erasmus have already flown to Dublin in order to begin this experience.

We would like to take advantage of this opportunity to say thanks to the Fundació Inform for giving a chance to our students to be able to have this experience.

Iker and Irene were at school some days ago in order to finalize and sign all the paperwork required so they could be prepared to take off in the next few days.

We hope that this is an experiences that they will never forget!

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ERASMUS 2023 (Higher Degree/Grado Superior)

Last week, we kicked off the 2023 Erasmus experience. After many tribulations, Miguel and Celia were finally able to leave Spain and start an amazing adventure!

Miguel, our student from International Trade, in now in Budapest, Hungary; and Celia, from Marketing and Advertising in in Poznan, Poland. We hope that, after their first week of their internship, they are having a great experience!

Before they left, they signed all the paperwork required with our Headmistress and Head of Studies.

This is just the beginning of a great adventure!

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FINSPAIN #TIB: SHOPPING IN OULU AND MADRID (PART I)

This is our class: International Trade 1 in EP. Javeriana and we would like to tell you about our project #Finspain #TogetherInBusiness #TIB.

Introduction

We worked on a combined project with students from OSAO Vocational School in Finland and from EPJaveriana in Madrid.

It was really exciting since we worked in small groups with students from Finland and Spain to be able to analyse commercial information in both countries. 

The project consisted in comparing different stores and products of Spain and Finland and there were eight different groups who worked on these different topics:

First videoconference session: meeting our teammates

On the first session, we were very nervous, because we did not know what we were going to find. 

Previously, in class we had worked on a presentation where we talked about Spain, its culture and what we liked the most. We also talked about the degree we studied, its subjects and what we could work on once we finished our studies.

Then we watched a video, where teamwork was represented, and with it a brainstorming where we put the necessary points for teamwork to be good.

And with an application we created the logo of our team and we named it. We were able to share a nice moment with our team mates in Finland and get to know them a little bit.

We will let you know about our next steps soon!!!

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Information about Cambridge exams

 

Congratulations to the students that got their Cambridge Certifications. Well done!

Would you like to be the next one to certify?

Come to the information on-line meeting on Monday 30th January

- Option 1: 9:15 - 9:45

- Option 2: 16:00 - 16:30

Fill in this form to get the link. See you soon!

Cambridge Information:

Test your English level if you are not sure about it.

Take a real test to check your performance. Are you ready?

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#Finspain Together in Business, our international project with Finland

Hello, we are the International Trade 2 students from EPJ and we wanted to share our project with you, and all the things we’ve learned from it. 

INTRODUCTION

We’ve been working with OSAO Vocational College, a school in Finland with students from International Business. We’ve done a project together about our cultures and the different forms of negotiation of each country. We had a videoconference with them twice and it was so interesting preparing it and talking with them.

WE MEET EACHOTHER

We first prepared a presentation to introduce ourselves and our school that we would present by videoconference. We divided all the topics between the members of the different groups,  assigning the work we should do in each team, then we prepared a presentation on google slides with visual resources to show our knowledge and make it easier to present.

Later on, we practiced the presentations twice, the first one in class and the second one at the assembly hall, like a simulation.

We learned about how to interact with Finnish people in a business environment and 

about their languages, business culture and customs. 

Especially how they organize their schedule, manners and clothes in different situations.

RESEARCH ON BUSINESS CULTURES

Once we attended the first video conference, we started to research information in several Finnish business sites about the business culture of this country. During our research we have noticed the cultural differences between our countries and how negotiations are conducted in both places.

We have learned things like the importance of etiquette and silence in negotiations, their conservative and close nature, which highly contrasts with the Mediterranean temperament and makes people from both nations find a point to understand each other and have a great business relationship.

When we collected all the information about Finnish business culture, we prepared a presentation which we later shared via video conference with OSAO students and teachers. Our presentation consisted of explaining the information searched the days before. All of us participated in the presentation and they confirmed us our topics were accurate.

FINAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

At the end of the meeting, we had the opportunity to discuss with them some different points about their culture (fashion, saunas…). Some of our classmates asked them some questions.

They told us how they handled the covid situation in their school and it was very similar to Spain. It was funny when they told us that for them it was easier to maintain social distance, because they are always respecting each other's personal space.

They were also interested in some things related to Spanish culture. Mainly they thought that the covid situation affected business relationships since Spaniards highly value physical contact. Related to the last question, they also asked if lunch business meetings were common. They thought it was interesting since they don’t usually mix meetings with personal time. 

It was a fruitful conversation for both parties, where we could dig deeper in both cultures and get a better understanding of how both cultures work despite our obvious differences.

Afterwards we analyzed the project and here are our conclusions. You can click on the pictures to see our results better.

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