Language on the Line
Every Monday of the spring 2008 semester, Hannah Miller ‘10 sat down in front of a computer screen to chat with her new pal Hector from Guatemala. For an hour at a time, the pair would speak to each other about Guatemalan culture, its politics, geography, religion, and current events. And they did it all in Spanish. That’s impressive, considering Miller never took a single Spanish course until she got to Denison. Yet there she sat, speaking in Spanish about everything from simple topics like the weather to more complex environmental issues.
The tutorials were a part of a new program recently adopted by Denison called InterLangua, through which a student is paired with a native speaker living and working in the country whose language that student is studying. For Miller, who finds speaking Spanish much harder than reading or writing in the language, the weekly video chats proved challenging, but they also helped her to think on her feet. “[InterLangua] helped me improve my ability to ‘get around’ words that I didn’t know by explaining their general meaning or by choosing alternate phrases–something that is very necessary now,” she wrote from her current study abroad stint in Chile.
The sessions taught Miller much more than the language. Her tutor spent several hours telling her the story of an ancestor who returned from the dead as a ghost to fulfill unfinished business. “I couldn’t decide if Hector believed this wholly, believed it partially, or was pulling my leg,” writes Miller, “but I think those two or three sessions just helped me understand how–even if I could understand most of the language–there was still a whole cultural element to the conversation that was beyond my grasp.” A lesson not learned from books alone.