Language village offers great linguistic immersion
By American Center's staff Sami Saaied
August 14, 2009 - “Enriching, hilarious, astounding …,” are some of the words used by students to qualify this year’s edition of the Language Summer Camp in Nabeul. This Village, when visited during daytime, looks more like a beehive with small groups of Tunisian students engaged in active lively discussions in English on various topics, or rehearsing for a play to be staged also in English, or attending a series of talks and lectures conducted by American and Tunisian guest speakers.
This language and cultural immersion environment has been set up by the Ministry of Higher Education, in partnership with the U.S. Embassy and AMIDEAST, to encourage undergraduate students majoring in English to speak fluently the language of Hemingway. Such exposure to the English language has also been enhanced by the U.S. Embassy’s sponsorship of a study abroad program to bring over to the Language Village for 21 American students to serve as language fellows and be cultural and linguistic Ambassadors of the United States in Tunisia.
During a whole month (July 12 – August 12), it was a common feature at the Village to see Tunisian and American students rub shoulders on the lawn in the open air to engage in cross-cultural dialogue, meet at the movie theater to discuss a movie, join in for a Karaoke to sing jointly Tunisian and American pop music, or rehearse for plays to be staged together on the graduation day.
This synergy created by the interplay of several actors in the village was reinforced by the participation of Tunisian graduate students just returning from a year spent in the US as Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants. These Fulbright FLTAs served as well as communication facilitators and socialization partners helping Tunisians and Americans get closer to each other everyday and discover aspects of the culture, history and values of the respective countries.
When the students were asked how this Language Village experience has changed their lives, the response of so many was that LVN was a unique life-changing experience which allowed them not only to upgrade their English language proficiency but more so was to meet native speakers of the language and share experiences and open up to new cultures.