These are some of the questions  Katie Read, currently studying in Belgium, is offering you in this very interesting article on the Expatica Website.  She also considers how to open a bank account, how to get help from the European institutions or reductions on public transports, how to find the best place for fun and entertainment…  And some information about students working possibilities too.

Don't expect the Belgian trainstations to be as cosy as that...

We also strongly recommend you to visit the European Commission Website “Welcome to study in Europe“ to get more formal information about the stay and the living standard in any EU Member State.

Some Job Ads this Morning ?

   Monster’s name is well chosen since this website is the world # 1 for jobboards – these websites specializing in job search and on which you can leave your CV.      

The Monster Virtual Job Fair allows you, from your armchair, to :    

• visit virtual stands
• find out detail information about the participating companies and the jobs they offer
• to chat with employers and professional recruiters
• to let your CV on the “stand” of an interesting company
• to apply online for an attracting new job

   All of this will be free, from the 27th to the 29th of September 2010 !     

   Click here and you’ll be able to not only visit the fair, but to subscribe as well to this event !     

These are the themes we will explore through a conference and a workshop at the Hub Brussels in September.

Firstly, let’s focus on the conference.

People usually say that we use 10 % of our brain capacities.  That is totally untrue.  The brain is an awesome organic machine that brings to work millions of neurones at the same time.  But we use it in different ways according to our genre, our age, our culture.

And we can use it in better ways !

Our brain is composed of two hemispheres but our education and our school training favors only one of them : the left brain.  Which is the rational, sequential and logical part of our brain.  But there is another part, the right one, which is more intuitive, associative and which grasps everything in one go.  The picture here below perfectly illustrates that partition of our brains.

Most of the time, men use their left brain, while women tend to use both hemispheres at the same time.  Mind mapping reconciles us with a more holistic use of our grey matter : with its very logical and hierarchical structure, its stimulates the left brain, while the use of keywords, pictures and colours tickles our right brain and enhances our creativity skills.

Mind mapping, with its radiant and associative thinking also helps you to memorize better, which for students is a real gift : with the support of mind mapping, visual and lateral thinking techniques, you will learn faster and remember for a longer time.  Isn’t that good news ?

During this conference, we will :

• discover together the principles of mind mapping
• find out why it works
• how students can best use it for :
  • taking efficient notes  
  • structuring documents,
  • memorizing courses
  • preparing exams

• see what you can get from mind mapping softwares
• And much more !

Practical informations

Buy your ticket here

More info on info@linguafrancaacademy.org

Discover our Workshop too !

Because of this great interest, the Foundation has created a club for kids – which one of the objectives is – to also initiate such project among children.  It is also another approach to reach out to all types of children despite their nationality, race and religion. What more of a better way than children reaching out to other children? They can learn to encourage and support each other – giving hand to-hand guidance – while having fun together and getting to know one another more thoroughly and put aside their differences to find a common ground between them so that they can live in a more harmonious way.

So, there it is! It’s now OFFICIAL ! The Stichting Lingua Franca Foundation is now a member and supporter of the Piccolingo Campaign. For your information, the Piccolingo Campaign is an initiative from the  European Union under Education and Culture DG.

Marco Bertolini, the co-Founder of Lingua Franca Foundation, has been appointed as a supporter  for the Piccolingo Campaign for Belgium from PICCOLINGO.

Measuring the language skills of their public servants is also a matter of importance as they have to cope with so many complex topics in so many languages.

So the European institutions have created DIALANG in order to help trainers, trainees and institutions to evaluate and adapt the level of language knowledge.

These tools help professional to create language learning courses.  But some of them, like the DIALANG Self Assessment Statements help you to evaluate your own command of a language.

European Language and Job Search Training and Coaching

The Lingua Franca Academy is preparing a series of language courses as well as specialized Job Coaching for people who aim to work in the European Institutions. Some courses will be on site learning courses and some will be online packages.

In order to help you to assess yourself your command of a language, we publish here two free tools that you can download and use to evaluate your command of any language.  It is not a test, but an evaluation tool, a series of assessemnt you make yourself regarding your skills in a language.

Be honest : don’t try to trick yourself and, at the end of the process, you’ll get a clear and complete image of your command of this language.

Téléchargez en français

Download in English

Expatica, the organisation specialized in resources and communication   for expats in Europe (Belgium, but also the Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland) today organized the second “Lifestyle Fair for Internationals” in Brussels, in the beautiful Autoworld Museum in the Parc du Cinquantenaire.  Not many exhibitors, not many visitors either, but a friendly and cozy atmosphere in one of the most fashionable venues in the Belgian capital.

We met some exhibitors and had promising contacts with some of them.  And we participated to a seminar of Lars Sudmann, Managing Director of Life Balance Masters.  It was a lady of the Toastmasters organization who recommended this speech to us and I strongly thank her for that. Because, Lars Sudmann is not only a brilliant, funny and fascinating speaker, but he has interesting things to share.  A lot of things.  And he shares them with a conviction and a good humor that are contagious.

Life balance ? As a job search coach and trainer, I expected the usual (and rather boring) discourse about the difficult balance between job and family life, as if both were divided by an iron curtain more unbreakable that the old communist one…  But, I was wrong.  Lars Sudmann considers life as a whole, as the articulation of all dimensions of your existence with a special attention to your personal goals and life vision.

We were pleased not only by the friendly attitude of the speaker, but also by the multidimensional and scientific approach with which he analyzed the life balance.  And also by the tools and tips he is proposing to the participants.

So, we had a really great time and we’ll try this set of new tools at home…

If you want to know more on this new concept, just visit the Life Balance Masters website..

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