5 Benefits of Language Training as a Team Building Activity

You as a team leader know that team building is extremely important for the strength of your team. You want an activity that will bring you all of the benefits of a good team building activity. You may want to look into 5 benefits of language training as a team building activity. 

Develops Communication and Collaboration

Every team can always work on improving communication and collaboration. It is an essential quality of a good team building activity. Language training adds another dimension to developing these two key concepts. Without collaboration constructing meaning, there will be no communication in a second language. Those who are learning a second language will have to work around a more limited vocabulary than they are used to in their native language, so much more attention will be focused on what is being communicated and how it is being communicated than would be given to communication in their native language. In language training, language students collaborate to help one another construct meaning and understanding in the new language. Students also collaborate as they work on creating dialogues, skits, and presentations in the target language.

Builds Trust

Second language learning in a group setting can be extremely nerve-racking. Doing it with a group of your colleagues takes it to a whole new level. In order to open up and use your limited vocabulary to communicate with others requires a huge amount of trust in your classmates. Without the trust that fellow language students will not laugh or make fun of attempts at using the language, participants will not succeed in language learning efforts and language training as a team building activity will also not be a success. The amount of trust required for language training team building activities will trickle into other aspects of your team’s work together.

Increases and Maintains Motivation

In order to gain any sort of fluency in a language, maintaining motivation is a key factor. With a language training, part of that motivation comes from the fact that an expert is coming to impart their language expertise with your team on a weekly basis or maybe more often depending on how quickly your team wishes to become fluent in the language. Motivation also comes through the goal of learning how to communicate with international colleagues or a new customer base. Learning a new language means earning more income for your company. 

Promotes Socialization

Superior team building activities promote socialization. Imbedded in language learning is opportunities for socialization. Language and communication are one of the key components of socialization, so language training is a perfect place to offer a chance for your team to converse and get to know one another while also working on key skills for a strong team. Language classes offer opportunities for relationship building. As your team learns a language your instructor will offer many chances for interactions among classmates. Language training is like any other effective training includes much practice and application of new skills in a variety of different contexts. In language training, all of those contexts include socialization.

Encourages Creativity

Effective team building activities encourage creativity. Effective language training sessions do the same. Whether it is creating new sentences using vocabulary or creating a skit, creativity is essential in a language training session. Figuring out what to say in a given real world situation requires participants to be creative in their language construction. In the beginning, language abilities and vocabulary will be extremely limited, so getting a point across about any topic requires an extreme amount of creative maneuvering to describe around what you are trying to express.

Wondering if CORE Languages’ language training is up to your company’s standards? Ask our clients from Bosch, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Google about their experiences with us or take a look at our Trustpilot and Google reviews. Experience all the team building benefits that corporate language training offers today! 

For ideas for other out-of-the-box team building activities, read one of our past blog articles here.