Introduction and the aims of the Swim the Language Project

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ KLÁRA * KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZSUZSANNA ** Language, Culture and Intercultural Communication in the World of Sports the Swim the Language Challenge Project Nyelv, kultúra és interkulturális kommunikáció a sport világában A Swim the Language Challenge projekt A Swim the Language Challenge, az EU támogatásával a Nyelv és Kultúra Szokratesz program keretében 2006. október és 2008. szeptember között zajlott projekt, fı törekvése, hogy a résztvevı országok, Finnország, Magyarország, Olaszország és Szlovénia kevésbé ismert és használt nyelvét és kultúráját, interkulturális sajátosságait megismertesse egy interneten zajló nyelvtanulási versenyen keresztül. A projekt az Európai Úszószövetség vezetı testületének, a LEN-nek irányításával zajlott. A több mint ötszáz résztvevıvel sikeresen lezárult on-line nyelvi verseny a nemzetközi úszóbajnokságok helyszínein interkulturális programokkal egészült ki, ezekkel is támogatva Európa nyelvi és kulturális sokszínőségét. Az elkészített nyelvi anyagok és a projekt-partnerek kommunikációja is jellemzıen tükrözték az európai interkulturális változatosságot. Az eredmények alkalmazhatósága más területeken, pl. nemzetközi Erasmus hallgatók vagy üzletemberek számára fontos aspektus lehet. Introduction and the aims of the Swim the Language Project Promoting the diverse cultures and the learning of the many languages that form Europe is one of the fundamental objectives of the European Union. Languages represent the richness of cultures, but at the same time they can also be a barrier to the communication of people. It is a new aspect of the issue that sports can be an important catalyst for language learning within a community formed by diverse people, nations and teams, all united by the acceptance of common rules. Swim the Language is an international Socrates project, running between October 2006 and September 2008, supported by the European Union s Socrates Programme for Language and Culture, which aimed to promote lesser known cultures and languages in Europe. The project was under the direction of LEN, Ligue Européenne de Natation, the governing body of the European Swimming Federations. From the point of view of the world of Sports the project aimed to encourage the large public of international swimming events organised by LEN to use the many languages spoken in the European Union so as to promote the value of language diversity and make people aware of the special relationship that comes from communicating in and sharing different languages on the one hand and on the other hand to use the languages spoken by the countries hosting the particular sports events. From the point of * BGF Külkereskedelmi Fıiskolai Kar, Alkalmazott Kommunikáció Intézeti Tanszék, tanszékvezetı fıiskolai tanár. ** BGF Külkereskedelmi Fıiskolai Kar, Angol tanszéki osztály, fıiskolai adjunktus. 303

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 view of the general European public the objective of the project was to promote an interest in getting acquainted with different European cultures, languages, and language learning through the development of a language e-learning contest which, though finished in July 2008, was available on the project website, www.swimthelanguage.org/race till January 2009. The target cultures and languages are Finnish, Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian. The language and culture material was produced in English, which was the common project language, and in the four target languages. The plans were that the language learning materials would also be translated into Dutch, the fifth language, as Eindhoven in the Netherlands was the location of the European Swimming Championship in March, 2008, but since there was no Dutch partner in the project, only the main page but not the project product was translated into Dutch. The Project Partners and the Target Group The coordinator and main partner of LEN in the project was Leader, an Italian intercultural consultancy, the other partners were two higher educational institutions, the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska, Slovenia, and the Budapest Business School, College of International Management and Business, Hungary, the fourth partner was Transdemica, a Finnish company specialising in web designs of intercultural communication projects. The Swim the Language Challenge was open to all EU citizens but it was particularly targeted at the large public of athletes, their supporters and competition staff taking part in European swimming events and the mass public of young adults interested in cultures and languages, and in the field of water sports in general and swimming in particular. The methodology applied and the work plan The modules of the Challenge are based on an e-learning communicative approach. Starting from the analysis of the language needs of participants at international sports events, we developed the items of language needed to communicate at elementary level in typical situations. The learning process was activated by involving participants in a kind of game where they were studying the languages by taking part in a competition. Therefore, basic criteria in the development of the e-learning approach had been competition and timing as well as the presentation of a great variety of activities and that of an appealing web design. The project was designed to promote the learning of languages online and at European swimming events, therefore it was natural for the project work plan to follow the Calendar of European Swimming Championship events from October 2006 to September 2008. 304

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... December 2006 March 2007 May 2007 June July 2007 August October 2007 Table1 The work plan was adjusted to the European swimming events December 2007 January February 2008 March April 2008 July 2008 August 2008 Project presentation at LEN Congress 180 delegates from all European water sports federations, European Championship, Helsinki (FI) Kick-off Project Meeting Press release and launch of the web site Article published in Len Magazine Letter to all European swimming federations Isle at European Master Championship, Second Project Meeting - Kranj, Slovenia, Launch of the 1 st leg of the Challenge Isle at European Championship, Third Project Meeting Debrecen, Hungary Communication to mass media, Launch of 2 nd leg Isle at European Championship Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Launch of 3 rd and 4 th legs, Communication to mass media Finals of the Challenge at European Waterpolo Championships, Fourth, closing Project Meeting Malaga, Spain Accreditation for the winner to the Swimming Competitions at the Olympic Games in Beijing The evaluation process was taking place in September, 2008. It focused on the quality of the final product, its dissemination and impact on final users. The dissemination and the impact of the product were measured on the basis of the number of website contacts and participants taking part in the language learning process. Evaluation questionnaires were distributed during the European Championships and feedback collected from participants of the language learning challenge on-line. The Swim the Language Challenge Process and the Project Product The language competition consisted of a medley relay, in which each leg, i.e. module was swum in a different language area in the four target languages. The fifth, Dutch version of the product was planned to be added to the fourth leg in the European Swimming Championship in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in March, 2008, but as earlier pointed out, it never happened, the project remained a four-language one with English, the language of the explanations as the fifth one. The process of entering for the language race was as follows: participants in the e-learning language challenge registered on-line and had access to the training sessions in one or two languages of their choice. Before entering the 305

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 competition they chose an Avatar and the language(s) in which they wished to swim the language from among the four languages of the programme and complete the training programme. The four legs or modules present language in the following areas. Leg/Module 1: Visiting and hosting The first leg of the relay is about the language of visiting a new place, getting about in a new city. In Visiting and Hosting participants learn how to find their way to the European championships, check in at the hotel, get some food at a restaurant and catch a taxi to the pool. Acquiring specific language competencies related to visiting a foreign country or hosting some guests from abroad is undoubtedly supported and assisted by the great diversity of topics included in this module. The topics of the specific dialogues include most of the situations a foreigner can get involved in when abroad. Leg 2: Socialising The second module focuses on the language of socialising and making friends. In Socialising language learners get talking to swimmers from other European cultures, learn how to start conversations, talk about swimming, tell something about themselves and learn how to make new friends. The dialogues in the given situations are progressing from one topic to the next, as they might realistically take place in relationship building where participants have the opportunity to meet people from different cultures. Most of the topics developed in this module are concerned with the theme of sports and mainly swimming, such as the situations Training, Bravo, Fans. The topics of module 2, to a certain extent, represent an introduction to module 3, Swimming and as such it is a forerunner of module 3 with the use of a fairly extensive range of sports and swimming terminology included in it. Although the majority of the vocabulary in module 2 is specific for swimming, the linguistic functions used are also quite suitable for generating small talk as well as facilitating and maintaining conversation about everyday topics. Leg 3: Swimming The third module presents the language of swimming competitions. In Swimming participants learn how to find their way around the pool, discuss equipment and chat about performances in the races. This module constitutes the central pillar of the whole project product, whose main objective is to invite volunteer language racers to acquire the skills enabling them to communicate in the given four European languages at international swimming events including European Swimming Championships, having their culmination and final destination in the Beijing Olympic Games. We can duly call this module the driving force of the language materials prepared for the project. Swimmers, swimming fans and visitors of international 306

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... swimming events get equipped with the language of swimming in Finnish, Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian, thus allowing them to exchange views in these languages on topics of common interest. Leg 4: Meeting Cultures, the Culture of the Hosting Country In the fourth leg the participants can study cultures in general, and the culture of the country hosting the European Championship in particular. In Meeting Cultures, the Culture of the Hosting Country they start to understand the mentalities of the hosts and those of the competitors and feel more comfortable in the new cultures. Since the international sporting events (with the main focus on swimming) including the Olympic Games know no boundaries, let us not forget that this language competition was launched under the aegis of the Olympic Games, by this innovative on-line language competition, the European Union and LEN have made joint efforts to encourage the acquisition of lesser learnt languages and learning more about the cultures associated with them. Since international sports events represent occasions and places where swimmers, fans and visitors coming from the most varied cultures of the globe, both well-known and lesserknown ones, come together, languages as tools for making friends and for exchanging views play a significant role. The design and the language of Meeting Cultures are different from those presented in the previous modules. Here the input was based on short texts instead of dialogues since they obviously proved to be a more convenient device for providing factual descriptions of the specific cultures. In this module, due to the complexity of the information conveyed, the target languages used in the previous modules were replaced by English. Just as in the other modules, the topics were carefully selected and followed a logical order thus they were closely associated to provide a brief but informative overview of the elements and levels of the given cultures: Country, Traditions, Food, Character, Lifestyle, Interaction, Etiquette, Taboos and Symbols. Apart from the majority of factual information included in this module, the language learners were also given a succinct insight into the sociological sphere of the cultures through the topics of Traditions, Characters, Lifestyle, Etiquette, and Taboos. Each of the four legs/modules is divided into three sections, and each section is divided into three situations presenting a communicative event. Each training session is divided into three parts: the Language in action section introduces the situation through a short dialogue using language at basic level. The dialogues were recorded with sound, so they are heard by the participants, which is very important especially with the more difficult non Indo-European languages, i.e. Finnish and Hungarian. This technical tool for the acquisition and the enhancement of the expected language skills, in our case the communicative skills, is essential for the learners to be used to try and make their passive knowledge of the written input active. To a certain extent the audio- 307

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 recordings served as a substitute for the tutor in the classroom and in a way they rendered the online learning process a touch of interactivity. The Practice section presents language exercises, mainly multiple choice activities. The training does not include any grammar. This was done on purpose as the objective was to teach communicative competence at basic level and not to provide a language course in the traditional sense of its meaning. All the activities were developed so that they assist the learner in acquiring the content of the dialogues and texts of the language input in Language in Action, therefore these two elements of the project create a coherent integrity. The vocabulary used in the activities hardly includes new elements of lexical items and if, on the rare occasions, it does, the learners are provided with explanations or feedback related to the unknown item. The types of exercises are consistent all through the modules and they all serve communication purposes. The most frequently used types include question-answer, multiple choice, truefalse statements and matching sentences or phrases with pictures exercises. In addition to the types above some other, more productive types of exercises were also added to the list, which, in all probability, meant a real challenge for some of the language learners. For example, in module 1 Visiting and Hosting, in situation Check-in, participants are asked to fill in a hotel registration form and complete it by adding their personal data and characteristics. Also in module 3 Swimming, in situation Schedule where the pages of the program of swimming events open in front of the learners and show the time of the swimming events. In most cases the gruelling practice of learning numbers and telling the time proves to be a boring drill for language learners. However, in module 1, in situation Timetables learners can practise these language items through a situation making them forget about the boring practice of repeating numbers and telling the time hundreds of times. In this case the learners are positioned in a life-like situation where they are looking at a screen for information about the departures of local buses and they are asked to interpret the information given on the board by matching the proper time with the proper clock. The virtual coach, as the third section, is always present to give feedback in English on the appropriate use of language in the situations presented and to give advice when the participant is ready for the race. When ready, participants can swim the language race, in their two languages, gain scores and access to the following leg of the relay. The language race, or Qualification Race, is a language test at the end of each of the four modules. The language test covers the language items presented in the training sessions. The test is mostly based on multiple choice exercises. Each correct answer corresponds to a given score. The competition final score is the sum of the correct answers given. The sum of the scores gained in the four legs gave access the best to the Finals of the Challenge in Malaga 2008. Participants with equal scores got extra bonus points for their speed. The first four best language swimmers were invited to the Swim the language Final Challenge in Malaga, Spain, at the European Waterpolo Swimming Championships in July, 2008, where the competition was partly oral, in front of a jury. 308

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... The final winner, a Hungarian participant, was awarded an accreditation to the Final Swimming Competitions at the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008. The challenge started in August 2007 at the Master European Swimming Championships in Kranj, Slovenia. The demo of Module 1, Visiting and Hosting, was tested by people visiting the Swim the Language Challenge stand in Kranj and it seemed to be very successful from the outset. We had many enthusiastic would-be participants in the language learning process and competition, fifty to sixty people per day. The e-learning process was launched in October, 2007 by putting on the website the first complete module, Leg 1. The second, third and fourth ones, Legs 2, 3 and 4 were launched in February, March, and April, 2008, respectively. The plans were that the materials would remain on the web until the final leg has been swum, till June 2008, so that participants would have the opportunity of starting the first leg at any time from October 2007 and gain scores to win participation at the Finals in July 2008. Eventually the Project partners decided not to remove the language learning materials till January 2009, so the race was over but those interested could still do the trainings and the tests if they wished. The Swim the Language Isle at European Championship Events The Isle, a virtual language pool was put up at LEN international swimming events. The language pool had been designed as a space with a stand in which people had an opportunity to take part in the language challenge and get acquainted with the language and the culture of the country hosting the swimming event. The stand was an open, colourful, mobile structure equipped with interactive computer postings where participants were able to have a try in the Swim the Language contest. The aim of this isle or language pool was to promote the Language Challenge also through different events introducing the hosting culture of the sports event. In August 2007 we had the first European Swimming Championships in Kranj, Slovenia and the second such event was in December, 2007, in Debrecen, Hungary, at the Short Course European Championships. On both occasions, and also in Eindhoven, Holland, in March at the 2008 European Swimming Championships, there were very positive reactions from the people who visited our Swim the Language Challenge stand and tried out the modules on the website. We had all three days at all these events minimum about fifty to sixty, sometimes seventy to ninety visitors per day who were very enthusiastic about taking part in the language learning process and competition. A Taste the Culture time was also organized each day at the LEN events where the hosting culture had the opportunity to present their products and artefacts. This turned out to be a great success both at the Kranj Masters Championships and also in Debrecen. Especially the Slovenian wine and honey tasting times and the Hungarian rétes and pogácsa tasting sessions were much attended. 309

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 A Meet your Idol session was also planned at these sports events, which offered the public an opportunity of meeting personally or watching video interviews with champions. In fact this was realised only at the first Kranj event, since the Masters Championships was not so strict an event with many generations of swimmers taking part, as the others were and it was held in an open space area. In Kranj a young Slovene champion swimmer was interviewed on the stand, he was very popular with the young audience. It was a nice and interactive event with many young people taking part. At the other events the swimmers were immensely busy and the space was covered and much smaller, so this session was left out of the programme. Effectiveness and Usability through the Users Eyes Although the effectiveness and usability of online language courses usually spark debates both among the users and the designers, the number of those who registered for the Swim the Language Contest, which amounts to more than 500 people, serves as evidence for the success of the project. Participants were requested to complete a user s evaluation form, through which we can have an insight into the effectiveness and usability of the project. It should be noted that the survey is not completely representative due to the small number of evaluation questionnaires returned, about fifteen per cent of the participants, still the ones that we have received allow us to some extent to estimate the rate of users satisfaction, which in turn provides the necessary information about the effectiveness and the usability of the project through the users eyes. One of the evaluation questionnaires has been handled separately, namely the one completed by the Hungarian winner. She also attached an in-depth report to her questionnaire, thus providing assistance, should there be an opportunity to further develop the project or to transfer it to other areas of sports which has been raised as a possibility by LEN, the main contractor. A) An overview of the findings gained from the responses from language racers not reaching the stage of the finals: Participants got to know about the Swim the Laguage Challenge mainly from two sources: the Internet and school, university or college. Most participants decided to register in the Challenge because they would like to meet new people. Quite surprisingly, the statement I am interested in languages has no predominance over the learners intention of making new acquaintances in different cultures, which was the second most frequently ticked option. The most commonly used race languages were Italian and Slovenian, which reflects some reluctance of the participants to decide on Finnish or Hungarian, due to the learning difficulties presented by these non Indo-European languages. Participants chose the specific languages for their race because they thought these languages were the easiest to learn or because they were challenging to learn. 310

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... Participants thought that as a result of the Swim the Language Challenge they can feel more confident with people from different cultures and they can understand more about other cultures. The majority of the respondents thought that the Challenge was interesting and useful. Most participants chose Socialising and Meeting Cultures as their favourite modules. They chose these legs as their favourite because they found them the most interesting of all. Most participants rated the design of the project as well as its usability, functionality and concept as good or very good. The majority of participants evaluated the audio dialogues also as good or very good. Learners rated the training exercises as very good or excellent. Judging by the responses, one of the main merits of the project product is represented by the training activities. The responses to the question What languages would you like to train in a new Challenge? showed a wide range of differing opinions. French and Swedish proved to be the most popular languages from among the ones listed. Quite a few chose English and Spanish, too, though English is the language of teaching for all the target languages so it cannot be chosen as a potential target language. B) An overview of the findings gained from the responses from the winner The Hungarian winner learnt about the project at the Swim the Language Stand of the Kranj European Championship event. She decided to register in the Challenge because she is interested in sports, swimming, languages and online gaming, she would like to meet new people and she wanted to go to the Olympic Games. She chose Italian as her race language because she is interested in it and she thinks it is challenging to learn and she hoped she would be able to communicate better at a forthcoming Championships event. Now she thinks she can communicate better in swimming situations and she feels more attracted to language learning in general. She thinks the Challenge was interesting, useful and user-friendly. Her favourite module was Swimming because she thought it was the most challenging of them all. She thinks that the design, the usability and functionality as well as the concept of the e-learning were all very good. She rated the audio dialogues as good and the training exercises as very good. She would like to train in Dutch, Spanish, French and Portuguese in a new Challenge. 311

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 Transferability to Other Areas Going through the modules and topics of the project product, one can consider some other possible areas of applications for web-based education of similar design and structure. In our globalized world the Internet has become one of the main mass communication devices allowing its users to cross borders in a matter of minutes and enter the territory of some remote and distant cultures. We presume the key issue here is cultural diversity. The idea of different people meeting, the idea of cultural awareness, the idea of accepting each other s cultural values, the notion of equality (as is the case at international sports events) leads us to the concepts of unity, cooperation, collaboration to mention but a few. These are universally accepted and recognized ideals of peoples coexistence. It would be possible to further develop this project by substituting language swimmers with, for example, Erasmus students studying one semester in different European universities or colleges, or business people travelling and doing business in several countries. Naturally, the design of such web-based projects would require the expertise of highly-skilled tutors who themselves could acquire the skills to become the instructors of specialized input at web-based teacher training courses in the specific areas. Although the Swim the Language project could serve as an appropriate example for the design and the structure of such areas of online applications, we should bear it in mind that these innovative areas would mean both a higher level of education and some research into the field of contrastive country studies with reference to the cultures involved. Therefore, the first step towards launching the new projects would be to embark on outlining a project design concentrating on the different cultural aspects of the selected countries, the range of which could be extended to some further countries. What would these new aspects cover? At this point we could refer back to the topics presented in module 4 of the Swim the Language project product: geography, history, lifestyle, traditions, etc. What would then be the innovation in the new projects? The answer is a highly specialised level of approaching these aspects, e. g. lifestyle and traditions could be replaced by social values, the subject matter of history would have a wider coverage including some political and economic features in view of the dramatic changes taking place in these aspects of certain countries lives since their accession to the European Union, such as Slovenia or Hungary. Furthermore, a contrastive approach would be adopted to make the above-mentioned categories of audience become more aware of the differing cultural traits and thus enabling them to correctly perceive and keep control over certain situations they may get involved in due to their profession or in the course of their career. Projects like these would require an extended network of collaborating language and culture experts and designers coming from the specific cultures involved. 312

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... Summary of the Experiences The project has completed all the required tasks and activities. The cooperation of the Italian coordinator and main partner of LEN and the other partners has been active, the partners were keeping in touch at least twice but more often three times a week by e-mails or skype during the twenty-four-month period. There were four Project meetings where the partners had heated discussions, though in a friendly atmosphere, about the size, content, and type of the language materials to be prepared. The Interim Project Report submitted to the EU was well received, and the coordinator presented our project at Project Fairs in Brussels and Tallinn, Estonia, in 2007, where on both occasions there were very positive reactions from other project leaders in the field as regards the commitment of the partners to the aims of the project and the results. We, the Hungarian partner, have also presented different stages of the project at two conferences in Hungary, IALIC (International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication) Congress in Szombathely, 2007, and MANYE (Association of Hungarian Applied Linguists and Language Teachers) in Budapest, 2008, and after the close of the project a presentation was given at the Global SIETAR (Society of Intercultural Education, Training and Research) Congress in Granada, Spain in October 2008. At all these events the special nature of the project and also the results were well received and in fact highly appreciated. The positive feedback from the general public at all the international swimming events was remarkable as well. The Swim the Language Challenge a Challenge for Team Members Developing and designing the Swim the Language Challenge has meant a challenge also for the members of the working team, whose members have come from different corners of Europe with different cultural backgrounds. The members of the Swim the Language Challenge team were from Italy, Finland, Hungary and Slovenia, and the representative of the Finnish team was a British individual. Team members have displayed different attitudes to time and time management, they had contrasting and sometimes conflicting views on the importance of schedules, keeping to the deadlines or simply doing too many things simultaneously. These polychronistic and monochronistic cultural differences, even if not harshly, were sometimes detectable in the joint work process. Words and phrases such as flexible, not flexible enough, logic, change the logic, schedule, limited material development time, frequently popped up in e-mail exchanges and the message transmitted through them occassionally gave rise to misunderstandings. 313

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 It also presented a challenge that for speakers of Indo-European languages the language materials are much more difficult to master in the two more difficult, non Indo-European languages, Finnish and Hungarian, than in Italian or Slovenian, therefore many more people had chosen the latter, the two Indo- European languages. This meant a disadvantage for those wishing to take on Finnish and Hungarian as their target languages. The international project team also needed to pay special attention to the fact that all the materials were prepared for an on-line language and culture competition, therefore the needs of web application and web design were of the utmost importance. E.g. the web masters spent weeks to find out how to put on the web some special Finnish and Hungarian letters. E.g. Hungarian letters ı and ő appeared in very different ways in the language materials on the web page. We could not expect participants in the language competition to cope with problems of this kind, and that is why the language test tasks at the end of each module included mostly multiple choice exercises where the participants did not have to produce language items of their own. In spite of all the problems and minor frictions that occured during the twoyear project period, the project partners always managed to reach a compromise, find a mutually acceptable way out of difficult situations. As a result of this, the final project product has become coherent and consistent in content, style, language level, quantity of input and graphics as well in all four target languages. Conclusion What we need to bear in mind all the time is that on the one hand this has not been a language course in the strict meaning of the term but a communicative way of drawing people s attention to the importance of learning lesser used languages in Europe and learning about European cultural diversity, and on the other hand that due to the sports related nature of the project we needed to focus the language and culture materials on the world of water sports, mainly swimming, on the needs of people acting or interested in this field. At the same time it has been immensely important to find a balance between these factors as we have intended to give useful input in terms of language and culture for all those interested in languages and cultures of Europe. References DEL CAMPO, A.: Swim the Language Challenge Interim Project Report, unpublished manuscript (2007) www.swimthelanguage.org/race 314

FALKNÉ DR. BÁNÓ K., KULCSÁRNÉ MAJOS ZS.: LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND... Appendix 1 The Main Webpage of the Four Modules of the Swim the Language Challenge Race, Hungarian Pool, Module One shows the situations Appendix 2 Situation 5, Exercise 3, Module 3, Hungarian version 315

BUDAPESTI GAZDASÁGI FİISKOLA MAGYAR TUDOMÁNY NAPJA, 2008 Appendix 3 Situation 9, Exercise 5, Module 4, Hungarian version 316