Students of Japanese studies at the University of Ljubljana organize introductory Slovene language courses for incoming students from Japanese universities on short-term exchanges. Although these students almost never use Slovene after going back to Japan, two questionnaire surveys indicate that the language course is meaningful to the Japanese students not only as a means of learning Slovene, but (perhaps even more so) as a new experience communicating in a foreign language that is not English and as an opportunity to think about language use.
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