Program of the Language Festival can be incredibly rich, because it concerns languages- one of the most interesting phenomena.
It's here that organizers' imagination may flourish. Just a piece of advice: it's dangerous in a way to have a multi topic Festival: e.g.: from language to culture, dances, songs and then to customs, food and so on. Choose just one topic "languages", but do your best to arrange everything perfect on just that topic.
In general one may divide program into the following parts:
That's an important part, because you begin our Festival with it and everything will reflect then the atmosphere of the Inauguration.
Goals:
Let speak the special guests of the Festival. Their status will give a definite status to the Festival.
Let speak the "teachers". Greeting words in different languages as well at the appearance of them (national cloths, some exotic traits etc) will attract participants to take part in presentations.
In order to avoid the Solemn Inauguration be too long and boring, invite some dancers, musicians or singers to it. Language of Music is international and everybody will understand it.
20 minutes for the out-of-doors Solemn Inauguration, or 45 for the indoors-one (if everybody has a seat) will be enough for the participants not to get tired.
It's an important emotional part of the Festival, where the participants can get a real pleasure. Professional as well as the amateur musicians, dancers and singers, with their artistic means (music national dress etc), make the Festival really multicolored. Everybody feels that this is a real FEASTIVAL:))!
In Toulouse concerts go parallel with the by-stand presentations, while in Cheboksary they end the whole program.
It's the traditional part of the program in Cheboksary,. It's parallel to the language presentations. There usually are 2 main competitions: that for polyglots and that on the Russian language.
In the competition for polyglots there take part either individuals or teams. All the tasks, quizzes and questions concern different languages.
The idea to organize a competition on the Russian language came, because organizers wanted to present as many languages as possible. But as far as Russian is known to everybody in Cheboksary, there was no great interest to it. In order to attract attention to Russian and to show that even the Russian don't know everything about their native language, there came the idea to held this competition.
Competitions may be really various:
Meetings with the guests of the Festival
It's better if your Festival has some (or just one) special guest(s). From some Embassy or from the other country. Somebody who is a famous, respected, interesting, multilingual person, someone whose life is impossible without languages. Such a guest attracts a lot of attention from mass media, official institutions (with them you are going to collaborate later, aren't you?), and gives your Festival a special status.
It's necessary to present your guest properly to the audience. You can do it by holding a briefing with the journalists before the Festival, or by holding a meeting with him/her during the Festival. At such a meeting participants can ask any questions and learn some new interesting facts on that person. Still, don't forget, that your guest must be also communicative, interesting, charming and attractive for the participants (which are mostly youths and teenagers).
International party for the organizers, collaborators and quests of the Festival
It's worth organizing as it gives the organizers an opportunity to get acquainted with all the "teachers", guests and collaborators in a warm and friendly atmosphere. It also let everybody have a rest. During this party they don't only have their coffee, tea and so on.
Party moderators may ask some persons to divide their impressions on the Festival; they can organize some short presentations of proverbs, tongue twisters or even songs from different languages. It's important to create an amiable atmosphere and to give everybody a feeling of being a part of the international team. Only then you can hope that the contacts you've installed during the Festival will go on and fruitful.
You may organize:
During the Festival it's also possible to have a boutique. There organizers may sell everything which is related to languages (books in different languages, vocabularies, some books on culture of different countries etc)
The team of the LF in Cheboksary prepares specially for the Festival a booklet "!00 words and phrases" in different languages. Even those simple editions are very popular among the participants. It's also possible to sell some Festival souvenirs: posters, insignes, pens, toys and so on.
It's necessary to thank everybody who helped you to arrange your Festival: collaborators, guests. It would be great, if you can give everybody a small present, which would help to keep the festival impressions alive in the memory. You may also hand out some special "diplomas" where you express your gratitude in written form.
During the close ceremony everybody expresses with pleasure all his or her impressions of the Festival, and the importance of such Festivals becomes evident.
It's possible as well to prepare something for the participants of your Festival. In Tours they hand out «Diplome petit polyglotte» and «Diplome de grand polyglotte» (it depends on how many language presentations a person visited)). In Cheboksary they have «Diploma of polyglot, a beginner». Such things stimulate the participants to visit language presentations.
It's necessary to analyze the Festival and to draw out some conclusions. In order to do that, you may have different questionnaires. For example:
For the participants:
For "teachers":
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