Beyond Words: Exploring Languages and Cultures

In this interactive workshop, you’ll try a series of short activities led by ANU lecturers in European Languages.

Learning a language doesn’t only involve learning new words, how to pronounce those words, and how to put them into sentences; it also involves gaining a deep understanding of the culture and society in which that language is used. At ANU, our language teaching is embedded in the lived worlds of its speakers, including through online and print media, literature, film, history, gender studies, and more.

In this interactive workshop, you’ll try a series of short activities led by ANU lecturers in European Languages. You might decode a real-world text message exchange, test how politeness and tone shift meaning, explore how jokes and ‘untranslatable’ words travel (or don’t), hear how accents and identities shape belonging, or learn to read a few words in Cyrillic. No prior knowledge is required, just curiosity!

You’ll leave with a taste of what studying languages at university is like: practical, analytical, creative and deeply connected to the world beyond the classroom.