21 November 2014

The OIS Language Learning Workshop

On November 20th, professor Elsi Kaiser, along with many of our graduate students, put together the Language Learning Workshop at the Parkside Performance Cafe at the University Park Campus  This was an initiative of the Office of the International Students as part of their International Education Week, and the goal was to give students the chance to learn key phrases (eg. Hello, goodbye, what's your name?) in as many different languages as possible. 

The graduate students that participated, and the respective languages they represented, were the following: Thomas Borer (German), Sierra Chinn-Liu (Hawaiian Pidgin), Bharati Dash (Hindi), Alfredo Garcia-Pardo (Spanish), Peter Guekguezian (Western Armenian), Chorong Kang (Korean), Maury Lander-Portnoy (Hebrew), Aninha Vianna aka Anna (Brazilian Portuguese), Xin Zhao (Mandarin Chinese) and Margil (Tagalog). Last, but not least, professor Elsi Kaiser represented her native language Finnish, and she also put together a great workshop by bringing volunteers together, taking care of the handouts and chairing the workshop to ensure it was a complete success, as it was. Thank you to everybody and let's try to do it again!

Below are some pictures of the event, courtesy of Ana.

 Since she took them, I thought Ana should come first in the battery of pics.
  Maury speaking (beginner) Hebrew to Alfredo and a non-linguistics participant.
  Ulli chairing her super crowded German table.
  An overview of the venue.
  Interested in learning Bangla? Go to Saurov's table!
  A busy table, where Western Armenian, Finnish, Hindi and Korean are being learned at the same time :)
 If you want to learn the language with the most native speakers, go to Xin! 

2 comments:

  1. I was simply amazed at the architecture of this absolutely beautiful venue!! The environment was unbelievable. I was fortunate enough to visit a NYC events place like this, we found awesome things one after another after another.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The language learning workshop looks like fun! It's good to see so many participants eager to learn a new language, and basing on the picture, German was a popular language at that time! Learning language with a native speaker is highly crucial too. You get insights on pronunciation, culture, and word use in a manner that is more natural-sounding during a daily conversation with the locals. Thanks for sharing your workshop event, totally enjoyed looking at the pictures.

    ReplyDelete