London events archive
SOAS’ Cultural Days
Date: 21st October, 2009 - 2nd April, 2010
Type: Workshop
Location: School of Oriental and African Studies
Summary
A series of 3 days for learners to gain a greater insight into one of the regions covered at SOAS (Africa, China & Inner Asia, Japan & Korea, Near & Middle East, South Asia, and South East Asia). Each day will focus on one region, their growing influence on Europe & America, and the consequent importance of understanding their languages and cultures.
The programme will consist of three sessions; one language taster and then one session on the development, economics or politics of the region, and one session on the history, anthropology, archaeology, music or religion of the region.
The aims of these events are:
- To place language learning as an integral part of understanding culture
- De-mystify the study of languages demonstrating that it is not just about learning a language
- Provide a spark of interest in languages by exposing students to a language substantially different from those commonly taught in school. For example, an Arabic session may focus on calligraphy and how different the script is from the Western alphabet
