About the Workshop
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Talking Foreign was a Workshop supported by the Grundtvig Programme of the Life Long Learning Initiative of the EU. It took place from April 17 to 23, 2011 in Vienna.
The workshop registration for “Talking Foreign” had stimulated an enormous interest. We had about 800 enquiries for participaten in the workshop. We have received 105 formally valid applications (sent by post) from 17 countries but we could only accept 12 international participants.
It was a difficult selection process because the majority of the applications fulfilled the required criteria. Thus we had to compromise and we made the choice by considering the personal topics the candidates chose for the Talking Foreign Game as well as the geographic distribution, gender and age of the participants.As the working language was English a good working knowledge of English was necessary for the participation.
The selected participants came from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey, the workshop organiser are residents of Austria.From April 17 to 23, 2011 the group shared a week-long learning experience in Vienna. They lived and worked together in a seminar house and undertook some visits to locations relevant to the topic.
This workshop aims to promote dialogue, discussion and exchange of ideas in order to discover and develop common cultural values. In a collective process we went in search of the dynamic aspects of communication in order to broaden our understanding of each other by focusing on the language issue from different angles.
We aim to create “a culture in the making” by investigating modes of communication in a foreign language, experimenting with properties and tools that are part of the communication and presentation process in order to gain confidence in the intercultural and multi-language exchange.
The approach of Talking Foreign is not theoretical but very playful and practical. We are trying experience and develop a common language through games, body language, voice and listening.
This workshop has opened new possibilities for the workshop organisers and the the participants. We aim to repeat this experience for our target group, i.e. persons who are interested in a creative intercultural exchange and wish to strengthen their communication skills in the European context.
Therefore we welcome everybody interested in the workshop approach and method to register on our site. As a registered user we will keep you informed about similar events in the future.