Workshop on Intercomprehension among Romance languages

What is intercomprehension among Romance languages? It is the ability to partiallyunderstand a language because it is similar in vocabulary and grammar to another languageyou already know. For example, Italian speakers can partially understand Spanish, even ifthey have never studied it, and viceversa. By exploiting these similarities, people who speakdifferent languages can also communicate using their own language or a Romance languagethey know well.The course aims to harness this natural phenomenon through a targeted teachingmethodology that allows participants to progressively understand texts written in the mainRomance languages and to interact using their entire personal linguistic repertoire, includingdialect.

The ultimate goal is to develop plurilingual skills that can be used in a variety ofcontexts, both personal and professional.The workshop sessions will be held mainly in Italian and Spanish, alternating with otherRomance languages.Target audience and prerequisites: the workshop is aimed at anyone who wants toapproach different Romance languages in a single course. The entire community of theUniversity of Bologna, including students, technical staff and lecturers, can participate freeof charge.

The workshop does not require any particular proficiency in the Romancelanguages covered, such as language level certification. The only prerequisite is theknowledge of at least a couple of Romance languages such as Catalan, French, Italian,Portuguese, Romanian or Spanish, or alternatively, knowledge of one of these Romancelanguages combined with a basic knowledge of Latin.It should be noted that the intercomprehension workshop is not a language course like thosenormally offered by the University Language Centre.Maximum number of participants: 19.Total hours: 30 (11 two-hour face-to-face sessions + 8 hours of guided activities).

Location: face-to-face workshop sessions in room 6 at the CLA headquarters in Piazza SanGiovanni in Monte, 4.Calendar: face-to-face sessions will be held on Fridays from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., from 6thMarch to 5th June 2026. There will be no session on Friday 24 April.

Workshop content: introduction to intercomprehension among Romance languages,development of strategies for reading short texts in a foreign language, development ofstrategies for improving written and oral comprehension in the main Romance languagesand interproduction. After an initial focus on receptive written comprehension skills, theworkshop will offer opportunities for listening and oral production activities.

For information and pre-registration, please write to: cla.intercomprensione@unibo.it.