From our blog
News, developments and articles from Regina Coeli
Making small talk in Dutch
Despite Dutch directness, you’ll need to—if you wish to truly integrate into Dutch culture—be prepared to make a bit of small talk in Dutch. By being able to chat about any number of general subjects, you’ll connect with your colleagues, neighbours and business partners. It’s a valuable skill which you can quickly feel at ease using, because you don’t actually need a great deal of vocabulary for it.
Multilingualism starts with mastering your mother tongue
The foundation that’s laid in your native language is crucial for your personal development as well as for learning other languages later. Multilingualism starts with having a good command of your own language. Conversely, knowledge of other languages also helps to develop your mother tongue.
Synonyms: A quick way to expand your vocabulary
Once you have mastered the grammar of a foreign language reasonably well, you can quickly improve your language skills by expanding your vocabulary. Grammar can be seen as the rules of the game for a language; the words get used within those rules. More vocabulary will make your language richer.
Mayor of Winterswijk learned professional German at Regina Coeli
The municipality of Winterswijk shares 60% of its border with Germany and, as a result, has intensive border traffic on a daily basis. No wonder speaking German is seen as important there. As mayor of such a bustling, international municipality, it is, of course, important to stay on top of things. Joris Bengevoord, who, for six months after his appointment, could boast of being the youngest mayor in the Netherlands, went to Vught for a week to brush up on his German.
Ajax trainers initiated in Chinese at Regina Coeli
At the beginning of this year, Ajax trainers Ed Engelkes, Ralf Kebsch, Marc Gosselink and Ian Taylor started developing a youth training programme for top Chinese club Guangzhou R&F FC. In preparation for their deployment to China, the Ajax trainers took a Chinese language course at Regina Coeli in December. It was hard work, but it gave the four men a solid foundation in the language.
Learning a language with a pen in hand
Why would you still use a pen and paper to make notes or write text? Nowadays, you can use the most advanced apps and programs to take notes, edit text, share documents—you name it—on a smartphone, tablet or computer. At Language Institute Regina Coeli, we are also naturally at home in the digital world, and e-learning is a part of every language course. And yet it pays to regularly write the old-fashioned way. We even encourage it in our language courses!