Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about LinguaFest¹
Author's note: I wrote these FAQ questions just after the Second Festival of Languages held in Tours, France in March, 1996.
Komentario de la aŭtoro: ĉi tiujn demando-respondojn mi verkis iomete post la dua LingvoFestivalo en Tours, Francio en marto, 1996.
Where in Tours, France was the original
LinguaFest' held?
How much space, and how many rooms were required for
the Festival in Tours, France?
Where did you find your teachers?
Were all of your teachers from France?
Was the location the same for both years?
Has LinguaFest' taken place outside of France yet?
I'd be interested in hearing where the idea is being developed.
How long were the original LinguaFests?
I saw that Bosniac was taught during LinguaFest¹. Isn¹t
the traditional name for this language Serbocroate?
At what time did the festivals begin and end?
How many languages were taught during the Festival?
How long did the minicourses last?
If each minicourse lasted 40 minutes, and each
course began on the hour, what happened during the 20 minutes between
the courses?
In total, how many minicourses were given?
Was each course--the same course, repeated?
What kind of people came to the Language Festival?
How many teachers did you have?
Did you pay the teachers to participate in the Festival
of Languages?
You mentioned that you had more than 70 teachers,
but you had only 67 languages.
Can you tell me more about the ³family² teaching?
Do the teachers for the Festival of Languages need to be
³real² foreign language teachers with diplomas in their language?
How did the ³teachers² who had never taught their
language learn how to do it?
Where in Tours, France was the
original LinguaFest' held?
It was held in the building of the giant, modern central marketplace. It
was on the entire floor above the marketplace, where 14 rooms ranging in
capacity from 10 to 100, to 500 are located.
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How much space, and how many rooms were required
for the Festival in Tours, France?
There were 14 rooms, ranging in capacity of 10 to 100, plus the main
room with a capacity of around 500. Total course capacity was 440 per
hour in 1996. In 1997 we will add additional space.
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Where did you find your teachers?
In many different places. Some came from the university, for example
Ancient Greek, Téké, Dutch. Others came from centers for refugees, for
example, Albanian, Ukranian, Somalien, and others. Some teachers I found
just be striking up a conversation on the street, for example, Bulu,
Swahili, and Lingala. Yet others came from local international
associations, for instance, Italian, Arabic, and Espéranto. None of the
teachers came from commercial language schools (I am not against having
teachers from these schools, but no one volunteered to teach).
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Were all of your teachers from France?
All of them lived at the moment in France, in fact about 85% came from
within 25 miles of Tours. The great majority, however, were nationals of
other countries.
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Was the location the same for both years?
Yes.
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Has LinguaFest' taken place outside of France
yet? I'd be interested in hearing where the idea is being developed.
Other Festivals are now in the planning stages. For example, I have
received letters from people wanting to organize LinguaFest's in the
Ukraine, Finland, Russia, Italy, and Croatia. I will set up the first
LinguaFest' in the United States in, hopefully, 1997 or 1998.
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How long were the original LinguaFests?
The first Festival of Languages was just one day: Saturday. Due to its
success the following Festival was extended to two days: Saturday and
Sunday. Future Festivals may add additional days, especially to give
samples of rarely-taught languages in the schools. For example, teachers
of Albanian, Bosniac, Chinese, and Zulu can show school children and
students a little bit about their language and culture.
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I saw that Bosniac was taught during LinguaFest¹.
Isn¹t the traditional name for this language Serbocroate?
Yes, but try telling this to a refugee from Sarajevo who teaches the
class! In LinguaFest¹ we meet up with some interesting sociolinguistic
issues. It is partly this cultural and human drama that makes LinguaFest¹
such a rewarding experience.
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At what time did the festivals begin and end?
The 1995 LinguaFest¹ began at 10 in the morning, and ended at 7 in the
evening. The 1996 Linguafest¹ had the same schedule for Saturday, but on
Sunday it ended two hours earlier to give teachers a time to meet each
other and have fun and relax a little before the Monday workday.
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How many languages were taught during the
Festival?
About 30 for the 1995 LinguaFest¹, and 67 for the 1996 Linguafest¹. We
are not sure, but we think that the presentation of 67 foreign languages
in a 48 hour period may be some kind of record. Perhaps someone in
Cyberland can fill us in on that.
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How long did the minicourses last?
Each course was limited to 40 minutes. We considered having longer
courses, but the public has a tendency to arrive at any moment during
the day, so we have each course start on the hour to keep the
late-arriver problem to a minimum.
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If each minicourse lasted 40 minutes, and
each course began on the hour, what happened during the 20 minutes
between the courses?
At 40 minutes past the hour, we started playing (we had a number of
international student groups) loud international music in the center of
the building. This outburst of music served as a sort of alarm clock
telling teachers and students that class was over, and motivating them
to stretch their legs a bit, and get out of the classroom and enjoy some
African music, or Samba, or Flamenco, and so on!
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In total, how many minicourses were given?
We offered 96 minicourses in 1995, and this year we had a whopping 216!
I will later explain how we organized the logsitics of this. Suffice it
to say for now that my Operations Management class from the University
of Illinois MBA program was a big help!
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Was each course--the same course, repeated?
Yes, in general each language was presented 3 or 4 times during the
Festival. In this way the public could have the opportunity of taking a
certain course in the afternoon, for example, if they missed that course
in the morning.
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What kind of people came to the Language Festival?
All kinds. First of all, we had participants from every age group: there
were large numbers of children, usually participating in the classes
with their mothers and fathers; we also had many retired people over 65,
and even 70 and 80! As far as professions, we never did a survey on this,
but I would say that there were many teachers and professors as well as
university students.
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How many teachers did you have?
In 1995 more than 30, and in 1996 more than 70.
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Did you pay the teachers to participate in the
Festival of Languages?
No, everyone who particpated in LinguaFest¹ was volunteer. Not only the
teachers, but the organizers and helpers volunteered their time as well.
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You mentioned that you had more than 70
teachers, but you had only 67 languages.
Yes. In fact, I think we had closer to 80 volunteer teachers. Many of
the courses were team-taught. Sometimes it was a group of friends as in
the case of Basque; sometimes it was family members as with Slovak and
Boulou; and sometimes it was both family and friends as with Breton.
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Can you tell me more about the ³family² teaching?
Sure. Slovak was taught by a mother and daughter team. The daughter knew
the most about language pedagogy because she was able to attend our
training sessions, and the mother knew the Slovak language best as she
lived in the area of the former Czechoslovakia where that language was
spoken. They complemented each other.
Another example of ³family² teaching would involve Samuel and Aristide
Ze, who are identical twins from Cameroun. They taught Boulou. Imagine a
class of Boulou presented by identical twins--a foreign language in
stereo!
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Do the teachers for the Festival of Languages need
to be ³real² foreign language teachers with diplomas in their language?
No. Not at all. In fact, the great majority of our language teachers had
never taught the language in their lives. For that matter, many of the
languages presented had never been taught in the schools. There is no
way that you can find a degreed teacher of Albanian, or Boulou, or
Cambogian etc. around where we lived!
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How did the ³teachers² who had never taught their
language learn how to do it?
We gave them a 2-hour, or a 4-hour training session where we showed them
how to use a short series of simple language teaching techniques. We
wrote a manual called Trejnadolibro which means Training Book in
Esperanto. We used examples of methods and techniques using Esperanto
because most of our future teachers could not speak Esperanto, and I am
a fluent in it.
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