This month we held a special edition of Chatterbox 2 with guest hosts Mina and Apipol from The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), and rather than our normal language exchange, we encouraged attendees to answer the question “What Is a Global Citizen?”
IAFOR is a non-profit research organisation, conference organiser and publisher dedicated to encouraging interdisciplinary discussion, facilitating intercultural awareness and promoting international exchange, principally through educational interaction and academic research. Though IAFOR works within the field of academia, many of the organisation’s values align closely with those of Small World, and in particular, Chatterbox, which exists to bring together the international community in Nagoya through language, shared interests and intercultural exchange. This overlap means that we’re able to test out some of IAFOR’s discussion activities in a more casual setting while giving Chatterbox attendees the opportunity to really push their language skills and tackle some more complex topics with new friends.
I gotta say, I was a little apprehensive to give you some of these more difficult conversation starters to sink your teeth into, but I was very pleasantly surprised! Not only were attendees able to answer these questions, I think it was a real breath of fresh air for some people who had been itching to have some real deep discussion at Chatterbox! It was fascinating to see how each group came to different conclusions, and also to see your creativity put on display in your poster presentations at the end of the event.
I want to say thank you to Mina and Apipol for hosting the event and moderating the discussions so well. It was a truly enjoyable experience and I really hope that we get to try out more academic discussion concepts at Chatterbox in the future.
The next Chatterbox event is on May 19 at LIB SPACE, don’t forget to register here if you’d like to attend next time!
