Department of foreign Languages « ktravula

La Casa Mexicana

How could I not have known that the best and the most affordable restaurant in Edwardsville was going to be a Mexican one? I had never eaten at a Mexican restaurant until yesterday. It was a get-together to say bye bye to Ellen who was retiring from Foreign Language teaching after about 42 years. Present at the event were all members of staff of my department (except the Head, who inevitably had to be absent). I had my first intimation with plenty Mexican dishes and drinks, including the famous jarritos (which is actually pronounced as harritos). There was margaritas, tortillas and chorizos. If your mouth is now sufficiently watered by just the thought of spicy delicious Mexican food, you can give me credit for it. Just go out now, and buy yourself a nice meal. I promise that you will thank me later.

The dinner was wonderful. What’s more, it was my (sorta ) final get-together with that wonderful crew that run the department of foreign language department.

After that, there was another get-together with teachers and students of language in the house of a different professor. Then at night, a hang-out with some friends over bottles of beer. Well, the goodbyes are done. The last supper? Maybe not. Next stop, an all-night drinking binge with somebody, somebody and somebody.

When? When? When?

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On Foreign Language Teaching

I received this article this morning about how to thrive or survive as a department of foreign languages. It’s long, but for those interested in the topic of teaching foreign languages, especially in a depression economy, it is worth reading.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/29/languages

NOTE: It was just a few days ago that I was talking with friends who expressed surprise that a language like Yoruba is taught in an American institution. “French or German, yes, but Yoruba?” they wondered. “How is it ever useful to anybody anywhere?Who would use it? Everyone (including the Yoruba people in Nigeria) speaks English anyway.” they said.

Apparently, it is still hard to sell the idea of learning a foreign language that doesn’t come with a “sophisticated” appeal like Spanish or Russian to most common people anywhere in the world. My interlocutors were one American and one African. A day earlier, another friend – this time a Nigerian on the chat messenger – had expressed similar sentiments. He even added a twist of the absurd by insisting that I was working for the CIA. That was the only way he could rationalize a scholarship that affords me the opportunity to teach my language in the United States. He also could not understand why foreigners could be interested in the language.

I think this attitude is a result of a fundamental ignorance of the purpose of learning anything at all, which is simply to gain knowledge. And there is no knowledge that is not power, as that writer Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it. Learning a foreign language gives one access to new ways of looking at the world, no matter how small the number of people who speak the language is. But the Yoruba language is spoken by over 30 million people, and has a culture that has survived hundreds of years and has influenced countless other cultures all over the world from the Carribbeans to the United States’ African American population, and produced one Nobel Laureatte. What is there not to learn about its culture, and language, and people? The lesson for me – if any at all – is in learning more about the importance of linguistic, language documentation and cultural studies. It helps to have something to say while being challenged about the use, or uselessness, of what one does.

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My Secret Friend Is… Olga

As I discovered today much to my surprise, my Amigo Secreto is none other than Dr. Olga Bezhanova, a Professor of Spanish at my department. She it is who has been stalking me, leaving me nice poems on my office door, putting gifts in my mailbox which I didn’t know existed previously, and finally today presenting me with the gift of a fine Cougar branded shirt.

It was at a final departmental lunch on Friday afternoon at a place called Bella Milano where we dined to an Italian menu where our secret santas were revealed. My head of department Belinda Carstens (who teaches German) was equally surprised to find out that I was the one who has been leaving cards and other gift items on her office table when she’s not there, with help of course from my co-conspirators Catherine and Sherry who work at her office.

Perhaps the most uncanny of coincidences, and the punchline of this post, is that Dr. Olga Bezhanova is also none other than Clarissa, my favourite blog commenter. And this is the point where I explain that I couldn’t believe it either, because, for sure, the matchings were so totally random. And of all people in my department, she was the first person I had eliminated from my mind as a possible suspect in this game for a reason I can’t explain. But as it turns out, I was wrong. Her continued presence on my blog had added to the riddle, and the eventual surprise, when the secret was finally unveiled. “Everyone (reading your blog) is going to think that you have only one colleague at the department now,” she says, and I laugh because she was right, even though we were sitting at that lunch table of foreign language colleagues numbering over twenty.

Thank you ClarissOlga! That was fun.

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Office Lunch & Audrey’s Goodbye

These are photos from the Bella Milano Christmas office lunch on Friday, and the subsequent send-forth party for Audrey, our French friend at Mafoya’s apartment at Cougar Village later in the evening. Audrey had come to the United States on a programme that requires her to spend only one semester and return home to complete her studies.