TandemPlus Spring 2017 Recap

Another semester has come and gone for TandemPlus. Partnered with the TandemPlus Student Association (TPSA) for its second year, Tandem’s Face-to-Face (F2F) program hosted monthly events complete with food, entertainment, and friendship. This semester, we reached 465+ on-campus participants, representing speakers of Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese), English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

The University of Minnesota's Class-to Class Tandem (C2C) program matched nearly 350 UMN students with conversation partners in Spain, Mexico, France, and Germany for telecollaborative, curricular-based language exchanges. Local F2F participants participated in the C2C pairings when course sizes locally and abroad were not identical. This provided F2F participants with more pairing options and helped grow the number of C2C exchanges.

If you’re interested in joining TandemPlus, summer registration will open June 12, 2017! Sign up by registering at tandem.umn.edu. Feel free to send a message to tandem@umn.edu with questions.

LANG Courseshare for Fall 2017 - List Complete

All LANG Courseshare courses planned for Fall 2017 are now open for registration:

• LANG 2011 Accelerated Catalan I
• LANG 3012 Adv Catalan Lang, Soc, Culture
• LANG 1161 Beginning Hungarian I
• LANG 1061 Beginning Persian I
• LANG 2061 Intermediate Persian I
• LANG 1071 Beginning Polish I (partially online)
• LANG 1111 Beginning Turkish I
• LANG 1121 Beginning Vietnamese I - currently full, but the waitlist is open
• LANG 2121 Intermediate Vietnamese I (fully online)
• LANG 3503 Traditional Korean Poetry Sijo

Students and advisors who do not see the language or level they are looking for should email Stephanie Treat at elsie@umn.edu as soon as possible to convey their interest.

Special Thank You to the TandemPlus Student Association Officers of 2016-2017

The TandemPlus Student Association jumped into its second year this last Fall, and it brought with it new student officers: President Ali Megarry, Treasurer Sarah Brown, Secretary Maggie Stone, and Event Coordinator Mark Liu. Their efforts throughout the year were instrumental in assisting the the program, helping it run smoothly during a period of transition. Together the officers took up the tasks of brainstorming, planning, and hosting creatively themed monthly events. Included in these themed events were a TandemPlus Halloween haunted house, cohosted with the International Buddy Program and MISA, a Korean Thanksgiving event, which delivered traditional American Thanksgiving meals as well as traditional foods of Korean Harvest festivals, a buffet-style study event during finals, and a movie night featuring a comedic rendition of the classic Chinese story, A Journey to the West.

In addition to organizing events, the group was responsible for representing TandemPlus as an Affiliate to the Minnesota International Student Association (MISA) at Affiliate meetings and at events. They also applied for and received several grants, which made the monthly events possible.

Beginning Fall semester 2017, TPSA returning members will be joined by new officers: Secretary Minh Tran, Treasurer Chaonan Lin, and Anas Al Badi in the newly developed Social Media Coordinator position. Sarah Brown will return in the position of Vice President, with Maggie Stone as Event Coordinator, and Ali Megarry will retain her position as President.

Language Center Graduate Staff Graduations May 2017

The Language Center has been fortunate to work with two outstanding graduate assistants who are both completing their degrees within days of each other. They brought a collaborative spirit, and a willingness take on new challenges, and unique skills to our department. Please offer your congratulations to the two graduates!

• Shannon Roach, Graduate Assistant Coordinator is graduating with a Master of Arts in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for Higher Education. She will be teaching in Wuhan, China again this summer, and is very excited to move to Morocco at the beginning of September to teach at the American Language Center in Fez.
• Carter Griffith, PACE Assistant Coordinator, is graduating with a Master of Arts in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for Higher Education. Carter will continue to to work at the Language Center through the summer analyzing the Spring 2017 PACE data.

Summer at the Language Center: We’re Open for You!

The Language Center is open for business over May and Summer Session. Our hours are more limited to reflect the decreased number of classes in session, but our professional and student staff will be here and ready to help!

Computer classrooms: Jones 10, 15, 30 and 35
Bringing your intensive summer class to a technology classroom breaks up and adds diversity to a long day for students (and instructors). It’s not necessary to create new instructional material to use in the classroom; existing lessons can easily be adapted to use technology, and we can help with this.

• Pair/Group work: The DiLL makes it easy to ensure that all students are communicating, and that pairs/groups are not always the same. You can reform pairs and groups as often as you’d like. The software can also help you to easily deploy and manage conversational tasks to promote interpersonal communication skills.
• Authentic media integration: Through the DiLL system, instructors can easily send text, audio, and video materials from files or online.
• Licensed software: The extensive list of software installed in our classrooms offers endless options for students to practice all modes of communication. For example, iMovie could be used to develop projects to practice the presentational mode.
• Assessment: Whether oral or written, our classrooms offer software that facilitate the evaluation of language production in a secure environment. For example, you can manage individual oral responses with the DiLL system, or conduct oral exchanges. 

Contact Adolfo Carrillo Cabello at carri093@umn.edu for ideas on adapting an existing lesson to include classroom technology.

Multimedia Lab: Jones 135
Over the summer the lab is open for general student use, and it’s a great location for students to work or meet up before or after class. We will also host special events or viewings upon request, including international TV programming, films, student cultural events and more.

Contact elsie@umn.edu to request an event at the Multimedia Lab.

TandemPlus
The summer Tandem program is smaller than in fall and spring, but remains vibrant. Students can register at tandem.umn.edu beginning June 12, 2017, to find a language and conversation exchange partner. In addition to a face-to-face matching program, Tandem often co-hosts cultural events for students.

Contact tandem@umn.edu to propose a student event or activity.