Humanities
The French Connection
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Some 5,458 miles, nine hours and two languages separate Eugene, Oregon, and Lyon, France.
But when college kids from these cities connect to each other, it’s a snap finding common ground for a chat: movies and music.
That was UO French student Emma Schumacher’s experience. Last fall, thanks to a computer and the Internet, she practiced her French with a native speaker on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
“It was cool to see how someone my age from France would actually speak and how the flow and structure of their sentences would go,” Schumacher said. “I found out we have a few things in common, which was cool considering she lives on the other side of the world.”
Social media and other forms of online communication have made language and cultural exchange easier than ever. The UO’s Yamada Language Center has helped lead the way for more than a decade, by offering a tool that enables students around the world to talk with one another.
ANVILL—A National Virtual Language Lab—is a suite of Web-based tools that teachers use to present language lessons. Students can tap into it to discuss topics in groups, through video, audio or text. It’s free to any language teacher at a nonprofit educational institution, anywhere.
One of the more popular services is LiveChat, which allows students who speak different languages—and, quite often, live in different countries—to meet in real time, using video or audio to communicate with one another.
“ANVILL is the language lab of the modern era,” said Jeff Magoto, director of the language center. “This makes it easy for teachers who want to partner, and it’s more effective when it’s a class to a class. You really start to care about the people there.”
French instructor Melanie Williams has repeatedly teamed up with Stéphanie Meunier, an English professor at Université Lumière Lyon 2, a UO exchange partner in Lyon. Williams’ students, who are learning French, talked three times last fall with Meunier’s students, who are learning English.
“Students must record a message in English and in French,” Williams said. “The students in Lyon do the same, and this way, each student is the expert and also the student, in relationship to their partner.”
Although the students are required to practice language and grammar lessons, they’re free to come up with their own conversational topics. The mass shootings late last year in Paris and southern Oregon prompted heartfelt exchanges about current events and the political climate in each country.
“This connection encourages students to be more curious of another culture and to realize that learning French has true communicative purpose, even if they cannot travel to study in Lyon,” Williams said. “My students chose to reach out to the students in France to express their concern and solidarity—it was a moment to check in and to hear about their partners’ perspectives and experiences.”
Those international bonds tend to continue after the class is over. Students frequently exchange social media and contact information to stay in touch or even plan a trip to each other’s country.
Said Magoto: “It’s basically pen pals of the 21st century, except now they’re communicating via video and online.”
—Nathaniel Brown