Dalarna University's logo and link to the university's website

The Language Café: Intercultural communication in process The Language Café, originally a Lingua 1 project supported by the European Union, builds on the existing café culture in Europe, with a focus on an informal, social setting, encouraging wider participation in language learning within the community. The café offers an accessible learning situation characterised by the participants’ active, voluntary engagement and is based on their own experiences and needs as language learners. The transnational environment provides the potential for border-crossings between the different nationalities, religions, and languages represented by the individuals in the groups. The café concept itself is anchored in second and foreign language learning theories, especially those with a focus on sociocultural and intercultural communicative aspects, including Kramsch, Hyland, MacIntyre, Lantolf, Byram, and Risager. The cafés provide a place for spontaneous, informal interaction, which motivates the individual to actively participate in the process of language learning. Thus, motivation has proven to be an important aspect of communication in a multilingual environment. In our paper, we will describe the background of The Language Café project, including information about the partners involved, the planning of the cafés, the development of material, the execution of the café concept, and the assessment of the cafés developed. Feedback from café participants illuminates the many challenges that arise due to the multilingual, multigenerational, and multicultural background of the individuals. The interaction of the participants while practicing a second language will be illustrated in the presentation through audio recordings. Moreover, we will offer analyses of communicative strategies and processes in light of relevant intercultural communication research.