Abstract
The paper presents a brief overview of the summer courses of Czech language for expatriates held roughly since the mid 1970's of the 20th century by the Czechoslovak Foreign Institute, initially in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. These courses and seminars were first designed for expatriates and teachers of Czech from Texas, in its later years also for participants from other countries from all over the world.
For several years, students of Czech studies from several European universities have also been invited to participate together with the expatriates. The paper presents the socio-cultural, pedagogical and linguistic features and specificity of these courses; it recalls some of the important personalities from Charles University associated with the courses and their participants with whom the author met during her 30-year practice in teaching Czech and co-organizing the cultural and historical parts of the course program.
The paper also presents samples of authentic comments by the participants about the Czech language courses and about their importance and mission.