The Beauty Of Learning Languages: AEGEE Celebrates the EDL

Parli italiano? Sprichst Du Deutsch? Beszélsz magyarul? The European Day of Languages (EDL), AEGEE’s second oldest ongoing project, celebrates the diversity of languages in Europe. Organised by more than 20 locals usually in the third week of November, it gives their members and other students a little taste of different languages. The project is coordinated by the Language Working Group (LWG) of AEGEE-Europe. Núria Fenoll, PR Responsible of the LWG, told the Golden Times about the success of the EDL of 2014.

GT: How successful was the recent European Day of Languages? How many locals took part? And which were those?
Núria Fenoll: The EDL is getting every day more and more popular! People are quite motivated to join and they love to collaborate with the LWG. As not all the locals registered themselves to our forms, we have more than 20 antennae, which organized an EDL: A Coruña, Aachen, Baki, Beograd, Bergamo, Kaiserlautern, Kraków, Kyiv, Las Palmas, Milano, Minsk, Moskva, Osnabrück, Oviedo, Padova, Passau, Ploieşti, Praha, Roma, Torino and Voronezh.

GT: Can you give an example of a few outstanding or surprising activities during the recent EDLs?
Núria: This is an overview of the activities which were celebrated within the whole network: the starting of a linguistic tandem within the EDL event; language quiz; city rally involving native speakers; language tables, where you can choose a table depending on the language you want to practice; presentations of different languages, where the attendees could even taste some food and drinks of the country; watching foreign movies with subtitles; karaoke in all the languages, and a party where a video in a lot of languages was made.

GT: Originally the EDL took place on the same day, then in the same week. Now it seems that it is a continuous activity? Or was there one week in which most local EDLs took place?
Núria: As it is quite difficult to choose one day which suits the whole network, we decided to expand its period of celebration to one week, which is the third week of November. For different reasons, not all the network can join in that period, so normally we recommend to celebrate the activities within a one-month time lapse after the AEGEE EDL has officially started.

GT: Is the interest of the network in the EDL rising or declining?
Núria: It is totally raising! We have noticed that every year more and more antennae take interest in this event. We have some loyal antennae which join every year, but also new ones.

GT: What does an antenna have to do if it wants to make an EDL? Is it difficult to make?
Núria: Not really, they just have to organize an activity and then celebrate it on the day they have accorded with their local. It is better if the local notices the EDL organizing team and joins the Facebook group, so it will have a bit of support.

GT: How is your WG supporting locals who want to make an EDL?
Núria: We send an e-mail every year where there is a link to a Facebook group we create in each edition. There, all the locals which are interested in celebrating the EDL can join, share their ideas and help each other. This is great, because they cooperate a lot; we only give them useful resources from the net, or some materials that they can use and, of course, we respond to their major doubts regarding the organization of the event.

GT: What can you tell us about the next EDL? Do you have new ideas?
Núria: It will be at the same period, during the third week of November. About the ideas, we are starting several different projects within the LWG, so we are more focused on these ones at the moment.

Check the interviews with five antennae that organised EDL events: https://www.aegeegoldentimes.eu/edl2014-languages-from-aachen-to-kyiv/

Check the LWG Facebook site for more info: www.facebook.com/LiG.AEGEE