Teaching foreign languages for specific purposes in the 21ST CENTURY CONFERENCE

The professional development grant entitled 'Teaching Foreign Languages for Specific Purposes inthe 21st Century' Conference was awarded to organize a national conference to be hosted by Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova in collaboration with major Moldovan academic organizations on the 7th of April 2012. The event gathered over 150 participants from Moldova, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and USA: university professors, students, researchers and educators interested in teaching foreign languages according to the latest standards required by the labor market in the 21st century. The conference replicated the model created by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a US national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student by providing tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the 3Rs and 4Cs (Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation). The conference offered participants the opportunity to learn about practical, hands on approaches to teaching a foreign language for specific purposes, such as business / tourism / banking / engineering English/French/German with a pragmatic approach - that of a practical, hands-on, realistic language.