We held our first Language Fair for students to showcase the wealth of language courses taught at Yale and to show students what can be done with foreign language skills. All language departments participated in the fair and it was a lively event in the TEAL room. The TEAL room’s latest technology installations were used to stream the content from a variety of sources in the foreign languages that were represented.
Language faculty enthusiastically embraced the idea of the Language Fair and, even though the turnout was not as high as we had hoped, their energy combined with the various materials, objects and foods brought to the fair created an exciting and wonderful atmosphere. Many ideas were exchanged and valuable materials and sources of information shared.
More than 50 instructors, teaching fellows and study abroad program colleagues represented 22 languages at Yale: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, isiZulu, Japanese, kiSwahili, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Yoruba. In addition, two instructors from Cornell University, who teach Bengali and Khmer to Yale students through the Shared Course Initiative, graciously made themselves available via Skype.
We hope to make the Language Fair an annual event in the future to help Yale students choose foreign languages that best suit their studies and careers and encourage them as citizens of the global community.
Please enjoy the pictures! (click twice to enlarge)
