My name is Katie Marchant and I have just completed my second year. I plan to major in French and minor in Spanish. Living just outside of Vancouver, I have limited opportunities to speak French and Spanish outside of class. For this reason and several others, I thoroughly enjoyed working with Ratón de Biblioteca in SPAN 302.
I investigated community libraries and helped translate documents but the most rewarding experience for me was conducting virtual English sessions alongside my friend and classmate, Dylan Morin. We designed an activity in which the kids drew their “favourite person” as we taught them English words for parts of the body and clothing. Some of the eager ones started guessing how to pronounce the English words! We spent a lot of time simply talking with the kids in a mix of Spanish and English, learning about each other’s entirely different worlds.
As someone who loves learning languages and hopes to become a language teacher, this was an extremely valuable experience.