FEEL (Countries, Cultures and Languages) – Funny Easy and Effective Learning about Countries Cultures and Languages.

The imminent enlargement of the EU will increase cultural and linguistic diversity within the Union, which will be both culturally richer and more complex. Therefore, considerable efforts to understand, respect, and sustain the very contrasts that make the Europe of 25+ so rich and complex will be required from all EU citizens.

Efforts towards a successful intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding can be supported through the promotion of language learning. Citizens of the European Union need to be regularly informed about cultural, social and, especially, linguistic particularities of the 10 new EU countries. Successful communication implies understanding of the social context and the culturally specific values, beliefs and behaviours of people from another country. Practical experience of visitors from the target countries to EU member states has proved so far that knowledge of the languages and cultures of the new countries is limited. It would be even fair to say that in particular Eastern European languages, cultures, traditions every day life situations have actually been neglected.  Moreover, even if EU citizens become familiar with some aspects of life in the target countries, their ‘knowledge’ is sometimes based on stereotypes, which in most cases are not true to fact.