LEI skype meeting – 7 November 2010

LEI skype meeting – 7 November 2010 - 8 pm
Participants: Agustina (Argentina), Claudia (Peru), Mariya (Ukraine), Muriel (France), Romain (France),
Veronika (Hungary)
Best practices - How to organize a Language Exchange event
The aim of the meeting was to get connected, share best practices and inspire one another. It can be
concluded that the meeting was fruitful, fun and useful. In the first part, we discussed about how language
exchange events are organized, what worked well and what could be improved. In the second part, we shared
ideas of activities.
We are looking forward to our next meeting in December on communication/promotion/attracting more
members and Xmas/New Year’s Eve program.
1- How to organize a Language Exchange Event.
A Language Exchange Event aims to gather locals and foreigners at the local level, in order to practice
languages, discover new cultures and make new friends.
There are several ways to organize such kind of event. However, there are some challenges:
a- How to motivate locals to speak foreign languages? How to attract more native speakers?
● Locals: invite more native speakers , use materials, games, tools in the given language
● Natives: advertise in newspapers, magazines, websites, programme guides that write in that language.
b- How to keep/motivate/help members who want to speak a language not many participants speak?
● Get them connected on the forum/facebook (a short message in the invite like “Polish natives wanted”).
● Encourage them to participate (direct contact).
c- What atmosphere for the event? Discussion VS Party-like
● Discussion
○ More serious. Better language practice. No noise.
○ Can be boring for some people.
● Party-like
○ Very dynamic. Focus on integration and social links.
○ Sometimes too much noise. More difficult to practice languages.
Both models are good. However, you will not attract the same kind of people if you have a discussion
meeting or a more party-like. Some groups try to combine both organization, but it is difficult to find a
middle point.
2- Ideas of activities/events
A lot of activities are possible to promote language exchange and friendship between the group’s
participants.
1

When you say to let connected via a forum or Facebook, do you have a specific website in your mind ?

We have a facebook page for LEi on Facebook:
Page:
https://www.facebook.com/LEi.Language.Exchange.International