Lakeland College

Skyping with Colombia
Posted on 10/31/2009 12:17:44 PM

I apologize that it's been so long since my last post! I really hope you can understand how busy I've been with my upper level classes, internship, RA-ing, and future planning.... Anyway, I did just complete the last week of a one-hour-per-week committment: skyping with students from Colombia.

As the SAP (Student as Practitioner.. its a hands-on requirement for each class) assignment for many upper level Spanish courses this year, it's been set up for us to do about 8 weeks of Skype with students from Colombia. These students are currently being taught by one of our Spanish professors who took the year off to go and teach in Colombia. The sessions are for the benefit of both sets of students because for the first half hour we talk in English and the second in Spanish.

Because of an unequal number of students talking, I was paired with an International student from LC to talk with the Colombian student- so it was two of us talking to one. With the exception of two weeks, we talked with Carolina from Cali, Colombia. She spoke English very well because she has traveled here a lot and lived here awhile. She was pretty patient with us practicing our Spanish as well. On both sides of the computer, we always had a handout of topics and questions to follow in order to start the conversation. Sometimes we strayed from the topics, but in all of the weeks we were able to learn quite a bit about one another.

I was reluctant about this idea at first and was very nervous doing this assignment every week because I'm still very timid at speaking Spanish, and though that feeling still remains, it is no longer as strong- so I'm very thankful to this project. I sometimes found I could speak Spanish without thinking so much, and that feels like success to me! Some students had a lot of fun with this- I actually think most did. Whether they were carefree in talking, looking for a significant other, or just really wanting to better their Spanish, we all found something valuable in the Skyping exercise. I really hope that even once Senorita returns from teaching in Colombia, that LC maintains this Skype relationship or at least this Skype concept for practicing language and learning culture.

Rae