Don’t expect the Spanish Inquisition: The English Café launches a partnership with the Institut Obert de Catalunya

The English Café of the FernUniversität in Hagen will on Tuesday 15th November open its doors to participants from the Institut Obert de Catalunya, Spain, thus affording students of both institutions the opportunity to practise their English and hone their intercultural competence skills.

The hour-long meeting kicks off at 19.00.

Marvelling at the new cooperation, Dr Eva Maria Sabater Bertomeu, an English Teacher and Course Coordinator at IOC said, “For students in a distance learning setting, it’s not everyday that an opportunity to practise one’s speaking skills arises. Whilst the meetings are not formal language lessons, they are nevertheless a rich resource for students who are serious about improving their English.”

The studyFIT English Learning Support Project Manager, Dr Prue Goredema, concurred. “We have already received positive feedback from FernUni students who have visited the English Café this semester. The presence of student assistants, the sharing of vocabulary and other tid-bits in the chat and the imparting of selected corrective feedback have all proved useful and conducive to the goal at hand.”

Students also indicated that they enjoyed the unstructured format so that, as in a regular, real-world café, the conversation could go anywhere. Nevertheless, the theme for the Spanish-German launch meeting on Tuesday the 15th of November will be “Living Abroad.” It’s anybody’s guess what participants will choose to contribute, but some guiding questions are:

• Have you lived abroad, for work, study or personal reasons?
• What anecdotes of challenges overcome and successes attained could you share?
• It’s easy to take for granted one’s ability to gallivant around Europe today; what else do we owe the Maastricht Treaty thirty years on?

This is your chance to meet students from Spain and to learn about how they view the world from their Catalonian vantage point. Your thoughts and experiences will no doubt be interesting to others as well. If we have piqued your interest and you’re keen to improve your fluency in English, all you have to do is click on The English Café Zoom link at the appointed hour: Tuesday 15 November 2022 at 19:00.