Interested in Swahili? Armenian? Well, the Brown Language Society is interested in you.
Next semester, the society will be piloting the Brown Student Language Exchange program, which is designed to support and foster student interest in languages outside those offered by the University.
The society, founded last year by Kai Herng Loh '14, was created as a Departmental Undergraduate Group to stir up student interest in foreign language learning and provide an outlet for maintaining fluency. The group works with faculty sponsor Elsa Amanatidou, director of the Center for Language Studies, and aims to support and supplement language programs offered by academic departments, said Amelia Friedman '14, a member of the society's executive board, who has taken courses at Brown in Spanish, Portuguese, French and Polish.
The new exchange program, an entirely student-run initiative, will allow participants to experience languages and cultures in informal 90-minute crash courses led by student discussion leaders.
"We really want to pique student interest in other languages and cultures," Friedman said.
The program was slated to begin this semester, but its launch was pushed back due to difficulty finding facilitators mid-semester.
The University already offers about 30 languages to the student body, but the exchange will allow students to interact with languages farther off the beaten path by both informing students about available resources and creating new programming.
"The thing missing from the linguistic community at Brown is communication," Friedman said. The society is trying to increase awareness of the opportunities that exist while providing new, exciting programs to further language exploration.
The society has already launched one program this semester. The Charla program provides an outlet for students to work on Spanish outside of class time. In Charla, which means "chat" in Spanish, four teams of student facilitators lead weekly discussion or activity sessions, "creating a space where only Spanish is spoken — a sort of temporary immersion where you'll only speak, hear and hopefully even think in Spanish," said Ben Stephenson '13, head of the Charla program and a member of the society's executive board.
Looking to the future, the society is confident and excited for its new programs. Stephenson explained there are French chat sessions tentatively on the horizon as well as the upcoming exchange program.
"Knowing languages is a tangible and relevant skill to have," Stephenson said. "I'm confident the interest of the Brown community will be enough to make BLS successful."
