Language tables host reminders of home
Listening to “Baby Shark” in Korean, discussing energy drinks in Spanish, painting lanterns and eating mooncakes at Chinese tea time – Rice’s language tables are home to a variety of cultural activities and opportunities for student connection.
Language tables are not only for practicing speaking skills or working on grammar, according to Chinese lecturer Wei-Li Hsu. She said speaking the language is not a requirement for attending events.
“Students are not required to speak Chinese; we just want them to create a sense of community, so they know they have friends or some kind of support network,” Hsu said.
Beck Edwards often attends the Portuguese tables, despite not being enrolled in Portuguese classes. After visiting Brazil over the summer, he said he enjoys attending the tables to discuss shared experiences over guaraná soda.
“I like going to the tables to practice and to just speak to Brazilian people,” Edwards, a Duncan College junior, said. “It’s cool to speak with more fluent people, and fun to talk about Brazilian things and what their experience is like, especially for the people who grew up there,”
Shammas Ahmed, an international student from Pakistan is a frequent attendee of the Hindi Urdu language table. Ahmed does not attend these events to improve his language skills, as he is already fluent in Urdu; instead, he is drawn to them for the community.
“I never get another chance to speak in Urdu in college,” Ahmed, a Baker College sophomore, said. “It can get annoying sometimes because I can lose touch with my own language, and it makes me feel homesick in a way, because I’m not speaking the language I’ve been speaking for eighteen years of my life. ”
When another student is trying to find the word for something, Ahmed said he loves being the one to help them remember it. Similarly, Min Choi and Ellena Jeon said they are eager to help students learning Korean.
“I was amazed by the fact that we have so many students taking Korean,” Choi, a Lovett College sophomore, said. “It’s always exciting to be around students who are learning my country’s language.”
Choi and Jeon plan Korean language tables each semester as language consultants. In addition to providing Korean snacks and tea, they work together to create activities like name games, typing races and filling in missing words to Korean songs.
Their agenda is shaped by the needs of the group, they said. Choi and Jeon explained that several students beginning to learn Korean said that they were having difficulty with typing.
“We wanted this to be helpful for their assignments, so we did a typing activity,” Jeon, a Baker sophomore, said. “It’s so hard to type in Korean, so I thought this would help.”
After being encouraged by his Korean teacher, Evan Park decided to attend this event.
“The typing activity was my favorite part,” Park, a Baker freshman, said. “I thought I was going to be really bad, but I was typing fast, so I’m proud of myself. Back home I didn’t have a lot of Korean friends, so I didn’t really get to speak Korean around other people. I thought this was a really good opportunity to meet other people and be able to converse in Korean.”
Language tables not only benefit students, but also support professors, according to Spanish lecturer José Jacobo. Jacobo requires students in his classes to attend language tables.
“I do it to get to know how to approach students best in the classroom and learn about what students like, what they don’t like, what things I can add to the lesson,” Jacobo said. “I try to talk about things that students can relate to. Sometimes just mentioning a local place that is popular among the students can create a good discussion in class and get them engaged.”
Jacobo said he not only hosts these events to get to know the students, but so they can also learn about him.
“Sometimes there’s this barrier between students and professors,” Jacobo said. “I think that by hosting the language tables it makes instructors more approachable in a way, and it humanizes them.”
Park and Ahmed said the language tables helped them feel more connected to their culture.
“I haven’t had Korean snacks since I’ve been home, so that was my first time having those snacks here,” Park said. “It reminded me of home and was really nice.”
“For me, mostly it’s a way to reconnect with my identity,” Ahmed said.
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