UNews - Department of Modern Languages

Six U of L alums now teaching in Japan through JET

caroline.zentner — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 22:00:09 +0000

Six ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge alumni are off on the adventure of a lifetime after being accepted into the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET).

The day before JET participants flew to Japan they attended a reception hosted by Mr. Shigenobu Kobayashi (right), the Consul-General of Japan in Calgary. Attending the reception were, from left, Lethbridge Mayor Chris Spearman, Roisin and Miller Wiens, Diane Minamide, Michelle Boivin-Carriere, Gemma Amoruso, Emily Kenney and Andrew Spearman.

They left for Japan at the beginning of August following a reception hosted by the Consul-General of Japan in Calgary — Mr. Shigenobu Kobayashi and his wife, Mrs. Keiko Kobayashi. The six U of L alums were among 36 Canadians selected from the Western Canadian region, which includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

“We are very proud of these graduates who have been accepted into the JET program,” says Diane Minamide, a coordinator with International Student Services. “We know they will be excellent ambassadors of the U of L, Lethbridge and the country as a whole.”

Minamide, herself a JET alumna, says participating in the programme provides an experience that won’t be soon forgotten. Being accepted into the program is the result of a rigorous process that includes writing an essay and doing an interview. Minamide and Dr. Abby McMeekin, a professor in the Department of Modern Languages, help prepare the students.

“Students who go on the JET Programme will have so many opportunities to interact with Japanese languages and culture,” says McMeekin. “This complements what they have learned in their courses at the U of L on a level that not many people get to experience.”

Miller Wiens (BSc ’19) and his wife, Roisin (BFA ’18), had their desire to return to Japan cemented after they spent a month there as part of an exchange program.

“Both my husband and I went on the exchange to Hokkai-Gakuen ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and we fell in love with the culture, the food and the rhythm of day-to-day life,” says Roisin. “This was a really great opportunity for us to continue that relationship between Canada and Japan.”

She and Miller will be living in Kasukabe, a city northwest of Tokyo, and teaching at five schools in the Saitama Prefecture. Miller, who studied kinesiology, had dreams of being a personal trainer but that all changed when he took a Japanese course.

“McMeekin sensei is one of my role models. I admire the way she teaches Japanese and gets students engaged,” he says. “I absolutely loved her language classes and I took all the classes I possibly could.”

Gemma Amoruso (BA ’19), who’ll be teaching at two elementary schools and a junior high in Sendai, took Japanese history courses while at the U of L and also participated in the Hokkai-Gakuen ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ exchange.

“When I was there I knew I had to go back,” she says. “After learning about the culture and meeting my host family and friends, I knew I had to go back eventually.”

Knowing about her interest in living in another country, the spouse of a co-worker recommended JET to Michelle Boivin-Carriere (BA ’18).

“I wanted to experience a different culture and go abroad. I applied last year and was an alternate. I reapplied this year and I’m off to Toyooka,” says Boivin-Carriere. “I will be working at a middle school, along with two elementary schools. I’m very excited. I’ve had experience with elementary schools before and I’m also looking forward to the challenge of a middle school.”

Andrew Spearman (BA ’17, BEd ’18) will be teaching English at a middle school and four elementary schools. While he’s not fluent in Japanese, he’s familiar with its traditions.

“Growing up, I was fortunate to be part of the Judo Club. Japanese culture and customs are very near and dear to my heart and they evolved once I hit university,” he says. “Diane Minamide has facilitated the importance of friendship internationally and I’ve seen the fruits of that, as well. We here in southern Alberta have a very important history with Japan. As somebody who’s got an education degree in modern languages, it’s important for me to come back and teach Japanese and to teach something that is more exclusive to this region.”

For Emily Kenney (BA, BEd ’18), participating in the JET programme represents a long-held wish. She’ll be teaching at a junior high school in Haebaru, Okinawa, Lethbridge’s sister city.

“My practicums through education gave me the opportunity to work at an elementary school, a senior high school and a junior high school,” says Kenney. “In Lethbridge, many students are not native to Lethbridge; they come from Syria and Africa. When I was teaching them, I wondered how I could relate to them because I’ve only known the Canadian perspective. In my essay when I applied for JET, I wrote about my desire to grow that ability to relate and understand what it’s like to be a new person in a new country where you might not speak the language, you don’t know the culture and you don’t know anyone. I’m so excited. This is such a great opportunity and I’m so blessed to be able to have this chance.”

The JET programme has been giving students the opportunity to travel to Japan and work in Japanese schools and cultural organizations for more than 30 years. Students initially sign on for one year but can return for up to five years.

“If there are any students who think that this is something they might want to do or if they want to travel, they should apply for it,” says Amoruso. “When I applied, I didn’t think there was a shot that I was going to get this, even after the interview. There’s support at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and you can get involved in clubs, all these opportunities are open to you. Just go for them and don’t dream too small.”

The next JET recruitment session begins this fall. Anyone interested is invited to attend an information session on Tuesday, Oct. 1 from noon to 1 p.m. Those interested can sign up with Career Services.

U of L social scientists net SSHRC awards worth nearly $440,000

caroline.zentner — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 19:58:03 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge graduate students and faculty members will tackle a variety of research projects thanks to funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

“The U of L’s success rate with Insight Development Grants was very positive, higher than the national average and continues our momentum,” says Dr. Erasmus Okine, vice-president (research). “Our social scientists and humanities researchers are conducting leading-edge research and I heartily commend them for their efforts.”

U of L researchers received six Insight Development Grants. Dr. Robert LeBlanc (education) will examine how immigrant teens in a rural Alberta meatpacking town learn the forms and meanings of stylized speech. Dr. Glenda Bonifacio (women & gender studies) will study how the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines has affected foreign disaster aid and gender equality following Haiyan, the 2013 super typhoon. Dr. Rhiannon MacDonnell Mesler (Dhillon School of Business, Calgary campus) will look at how consumer identities can divide and unite in an increasingly polarized world. Dr. Paige Pope (kinesiology & physical education) will compare the effectiveness of various messages designed to reduce sedentary behaviour in older adults.

Other researchers receiving Insight Development Grants include Drs. Fangfang Li (psychology) and Noëlle Gunst-Leca (psychology). As well, Dr. Inge Genee (modern languages), co-applicant on a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta-based project called 21st century tools for Indigenous languages, received a Partnership Grant.

Dr. Carly Adams, a Board of Governors Research Chair (Tier II) and a kinesiology & physical education professor, and Dr. Darren Aoki (BA ’90), a professor in world history at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Plymouth and adjunct professor in history at the U of L, received an Insight Grant for their Transforming Canadian Nikkei oral history project. This grant allows them to continue exploring the cultural and social history of Canadian Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) in southern Alberta from 1950 to the 21st century in partnership with the Galt Museum & Archives, Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden and the Nikkei Cultural Society of Lethbridge and Area.

Along with the faculty members who received awards, several U of L graduate students received SSHRC funding, including master’s students Jennifer Chernishenko, Margaret Ingram, Quinn Johnsson, Mary Siever, Michelle Sylvestre and Jaisie Walker and doctoral student Serena Visser.

Chernishenko will delve into how girls’ mindsets—whether growth oriented or fixed— affects their sense of belonging and participation in sports. Siever is studying the reasons why parenting and mothering, in particular, receive minimal support in post-secondary study. Sylvestre will examine how social issues and context get transferred into the medical world and how that’s connected to today’s consumption of pharmaceuticals. Visser will explore the impact institutional norms and practices within the mental health system have for trans and gender-diverse people.

Indigenous language stakeholders to gather at 25th Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium

trevor.kenney — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 17:14:28 +0000

As Indigenous communities across North America face the challenge of keeping their traditional languages alive, an important conference is coming to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

The U of L’s Departments of Modern Languages and Indigenous Studies have teamed with the Peigan Board of Education/Piikani Nation to host the 25th Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium (SILS 2018), June 7-9 at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. The symposium, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), will bring together Indigenous language stakeholders from North America and beyond, including elders, community leaders and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, as they seek to develop best practices and share resources and knowledge as they attempt to preserve Indigenous languages.

“Communities and universities have been trying for longer than 25 years to figure out what it takes to maintain and revitalize Indigenous languages,” says Dr. Inge Genee, a professor in the U of L’s Department of Modern Languages who has done extensive linguistic research on the Blackfoot language. “This symposium started as a community initiative and, from the beginning, involved collaboration between academic experts and Indigenous language speakers to look at what goes into good second language teaching in respect to Indigenous languages.”

A number of Indigenous communities are quickly realizing that their traditional languages are fading away with the passing of elders. The local Blackfoot population is no exception.

“The Blackfoot language is under threat of falling out of use,” says Genee. “There are very few children who learn the language as the first language in the home today, and most fluent speakers are over 50 or 60 years old. There are also very few monolingual speakers, or speakers who speak no English. These are all signs that the language is endangered.”

SILS has been at the forefront of developing strategies to deal with language loss, recognizing that Indigenous culture is inextricably linked with traditional language.

“For most Indigenous people, the language and the culture are intimately connected,” says Genee. “Language and culture are one, which means language always needs to be taught through the culture or along with the culture as a unit.”

SILS will feature 11 keynote speakers and the presentation of more than 40 papers over the course of three days. Attendees will focus on sharing best practices for stabilizing and revitalizing languages, as well as resources such as curriculum materials that are being used to teach certain languages. Academics will exchange ideas about broad issues such as policy development and planning, including framework development for communities that wish to begin the difficult process of recapturing their historical language.

“One of the very big, practical issues many of these communities face is they struggle with a lack of resources, so gaining learning strategies from each other is very important,” adds Genee, who expects about 250 attendees at the symposium.

That the impetus behind restoring Indigenous languages is coming from Indigenous communities is key to future success.

“What’s really nice to see is how the communities are doing a lot of this work themselves and are leading the path,” says Genee. “They are open and willing to collaborate with ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, but they are leading the way and we are here in a supportive role.”

For more information on SILS 2018, visit www.sils2018.ca.

Program review well worth the time and effort

caroline.zentner — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:24:47 +0000

Conducting a program-wide review requires time, patience and the willingness to look at every aspect of a program with an eye to improvement, even if things are already working well.

That was the attitude adopted by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Department of Modern Languages when its program was reviewed in 2013. Dr. Inge Genee, department chair, says the review was a positive process for their department despite the time commitment involved.

“I would generally advise not to treat a review as yet another piece of red tape that we are required to do that keeps us away from our research. If you do it properly and try to identify, separately from the requirements of the policy document, the issues that you wouldn’t mind a second eye on, you can get some good things out of a review,” says Genee.

U of L programs, or units in some cases, must be reviewed once every seven years, both to ensure degree programs meet the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s quality standards and to differentiate and solidify the U of L’s place as a comprehensive research university. Having a reputation for high-quality programs, as the U of L does, helps recruit and retain students and faculty.

The review process follows predetermined guidelines and involves four basic steps, the first of which is a self-study. A department committee examines the program in depth and creates a Self-Study Report. The self-study, which includes surveying students and staff and examining demographic and enrolment data, describes the program’s history and current form.

The next step involves appointing two external reviewers who are subject matter experts at outside universities. After an on-campus visit, they write a report that highlights the strengths of a program and recommends potential changes.

The self-study committee reviews the external report and responds to the recommendations. Then the Dean crafts a response to both reports and develops an action plan, which is submitted to the U of L’s Quality Assurance Committee. The committee prepares a closing memo listing the major findings and the Provost lists the required actions generated by the review process. The memo is posted to the quality assurance website but the review process doesn’t end there. Progress on addressing the actions is reviewed at the one- and three-year intervals to ensure implementation is on track.

With the review of Modern Languages now in the rearview mirror, Genee reflected on the process and offered some suggestions that other departments might use.

“I would advise other departments to appoint a person to be responsible for this process and arrange for that person to be properly compensated, whatever that means,” Genee said. “It really is a big job if you want to do it seriously.”

Genee says the self-study portion of the review took longer than anticipated and the department lead on the review should have been relieved of some regular duties to offset the demands of the review.

As it turned out, the external review provided the most valuable feedback. The reviewers, from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Winnipeg and Western ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, visited at the beginning of March.

“They really did their best to understand the department as a unit,” says Genee. “They extensively met with every faculty member individually, with students individually and in groups, and with administrative support. They worked hard to understand the specific context that we have at the U of L.”

Their report pointed to a way to be more efficient when collaborating with other faculties about combined degrees, particularly when the requirements of faculties clash.

“We have been, for years, trying at a departmental level to address some of those things. It always doesn’t quite get resolved,” says Genee. “The external reviewers suggested a number of creative ways we could be dealing with these issues, which we are now pursuing.”

The external reviewers also noted that faculty members’ time was spent on teaching and providing services like counseling and advising to students to the detriment of research activities, teaching development and revamping curricula.

“They were able to tell us that some of our workload is improperly weighted and so we are looking at that,” she says.

Since 2006, 28 reviews have been closed, 10 are in progress and another four began in September. The goal is to have reviewed every single program and unit by 2020.

Research team links hand preference in children to executive function

trevor.kenney — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:36:03 +0000

Children who have a significant hand preference may have better behavioural control, memory and planning skills, according to a new study published by a team of researchers at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

Drs. Claudia Gonzalez, left, and Robbin Gibb are working to formalize the working relationship between kinesiology and neuroscience.

The group found that a more lateralized brain supports the development of Executive Function (EF) - a blanket term that is considered to include self-regulation, working memory and planning. In the study, children (ages 5-6 and 9-10) undertook a series of tests of hand preference for grasping items while their parents filled out a questionnaire to determine their EF.

The study was recently published by Frontiers in Psychology.

“In our experiment, all children self-reported as right-handed, yet many of them failed to show a right-hand preference for grasping. Overall, these children showed more problems with EF,” says Dr. Robbin Gibb, a neuroscientist at the U of L’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN).

Using Lego® blocks, researchers observed how often children who were right-handed used their dominant hand to build a model. What they found is that those who used their right hand at a higher rate also had, according to their parents, higher EF. Children who used both hands to complete the task generally had a lower EF rating.

“Our results suggest that EF enjoys privileged support from the left hemisphere, which also controls the right hand. More likely, however, the results indicate that the greater the degree of lateralization (either to the left or right hemisphere) supports better behavioural control,” says Dr. Claudia Gonzalez, a Canada Research Chair in Sensorimotor Control, and an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology.

Establishing a link between degree of hand use for precision grasping and EF may allow parents and caregivers to predict if children are likely to experience issues in learning and maturing. This would allow for the opportunity to introduce early interventions, something the U of L researchers will explore in the coming year.

Gonzalez and Gibb will study whether exclusively exercising a child’s dominant hand (for brief intervals of time each day) helps to develop EF, and if developing a more lateralized hand preference helps to develop a more efficient brain.

The study was a result of a unique collaboration between Gonzalez’s kinesiology lab and Gibb’s lab at the CCBN, located at the U of L. Funded by the Office of Research Services, this research also included Dr. Nicole Rosen (now at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Manitoba), Dr. Inge Genee from the Department of Modern Languages, Dr. Fangfang Li from the Department of Psychology and Dr. Noella Piquette from the Faculty of Education.

Considering the potential of this type of collaborative research, Drs. Gonzalez and Gibb are working to formalize the working relationship between kinesiology and neuroscience.

The Frontiers in Psychology paper can be found at the following link: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00285/abstract.

Japan Culture Day celebrated at U of L

trevor.kenney — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:54:35 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Asian Studies program and the Department of Modern Languages, in cooperation with the International Centre for Students, is hosting a number of events this week in celebration of Japan Culture Day.

The week begins with a pair of talks on Tuesday, March 25 in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library, and continues Thursday, March 27 with a full day of activities that include tea ceremonies, judo and karate demonstrations as well as dance demos, lectures and Japanese food.

These events are open to everyone and media are invited to attend.

Tuesday, March 25
L1170

Meiji: Japan in Transition at Home (Part I) and Abroad (Part II)
4 p.m. - The Emperor and His Poetic Subjects: Ceremony of the Imperial New Year Poetry Reading in Meiji Japan
Gideon Fujiwara (History)

4:30 p.m. - Meiji Export of Japanese Culture: Modern Japan's Display of Traditional Culture at the 1893 World Expo
Dr. John Harding (Religious Studies)

Thursday, March 27
��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Hall Atrium

10 to 10:35 a.m. - Tea Ceremony
Rie Nagai

10:40 to 11:10 a.m. - Bon Dance demo and mini-lesson
Minyo Dancers

11:15 to 11:40 a.m. - The Second Coming of Shinzo Abe
Dr. Trevor Harrison

11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. - Judo demo and mini-lesson
Lethbridge Kyodokan Judo Club

12:20 to 12:50 p.m. - Tea Ceremony
Masako Ohtomo

1 to 1:30 p.m. - Buddhism and Japanese Culture
Reverend Yasuo Izumi

1:35 to 2:05 p.m. - Karate demo and mini lesson
Taka Karate School

2:10 to 2:40 p.m. - The History of Japanese in Southern Alberta
Mac and Reyko Nishiyama

3:05 to 4 p.m. - Taiko demo and mini-lesson
Hibikiya

Japanese food available from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

French language scholarship enables opportunity

trevor.kenney — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:02:21 +0000

Maggie Kogut, a third-year modern languages and English major, has received a highly competitive national scholarship to attend a French language university of her choice in Canada for a year of study.

Kogut, originally from Sylvan Lake, Alta., transferred to the U of L from Red Deer College. She will receive $7,000 and travel expenses as the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Endowment Fund for Study in a Second Official Language award, administered by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).

"The competition for this award is fierce as there are only a maximum of three awarded every year," says Dr. Tabitha Spagnolo Sadr, an assistant professor of French and one of Kogut's nominators. "Each university in Canada can put forth only their best candidate.

"The idea is that anglophone undergraduate students either in their second or third year can apply for funding to study for a year at a francophone institution. In turn, francophone students compete for the same award to study at an anglophone institution. We are extremely proud of Maggie for this exceptional achievement."

Third-year student, Maggie Kogut, will study at the Université du Québec à Montréal for a year after winning a prestigious national scholarship

Kogut is taking majors in both English and French, and is already refining her bilingual writing skills as the Entertainment editor and as a French-language columnist for the Meliorist.

Though the year away adds to the time Kogut ultimately spends in school, she does not mind at all.

"I am interested in taking a program at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) which focuses on French writing for non-francophones," says Kogut. "I'm considering a career in journalism, and being able to write effectively in both languages would be a helpful skill."

Spagnolo Sadr says she and her colleagues in the Department of Modern Languages spend a great deal of time and effort creating a cultural environment and range of courses, particularly at the upper levels, that prepare students like Kogut to succeed in language and literature studies in the classroom and beyond.

"Department members are always pleased to engage with our students and support them in exploring a wide range of external opportunities including funding, travel and employment options."

This story first appeared in the June 2013 edition of the Legend. For a look at the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

5 Questions with . . .Dr. Nicole Rosen

trevor.kenney — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:19:04 +0000

Dr. Nicole Rosen teaches languages and linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages. Her research interests include phonetics and phonology, Michif language, Western Algonquian languages, language revitalization, English and French in the Canadian Prairies and lexicography of endangered languages.

What first piqued your interest in your research discipline?

After high school, I spent a year in France as an exchange student, and that's when I started really listening to the way people talk, and observing differences from how they talked at home in Canada and in France. When I started my undergrad degree at Queen's, I knew I wanted to study languages, but normally studying a language meant studying its literature, and I wasn't sure about completely giving up math and science. I pored through the entire course calendar looking at all the program possibilities, and found something called 'linguistics' that purported to be the scientific study of language. I was hooked from the first linguistics class, and I knew I wanted to be a linguistics researcher, analyzing language in use. Linguistics allows me to combine my love of analysis and scientific method with my love of social observation and interaction. In essence, I didn't have to choose between math and literature after all: I get the best of both worlds in linguistics.

Dr. Nicole Rosen teaches languages and linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages.

How is your research applicable in "the real world"?

Different aspects of my research are applicable in different ways. My lexicographic work on the Michif language has an obvious direct application because it is a dictionary that may be used by learners and teachers of the language in a concrete way. This work in language revitalization is also important in validating and enlightening others about a language and culture that has been ignored for the better part of the last century. My research on English and French on the Prairies can be applicable when teaching informal English or French: as it is spoken, by real people, not formally, as it is written. Most people, when learning a language, want to know how to communicate, make friends, and enter into a society that is closed to them without that language. Learning how people speak is essential to accessing society, not how they write, which can be the more traditional basis of language teaching and learning.

What is the greatest honour you have received in your career?

Academic grants are an obvious honour, and I'm very grateful for those, but my greatest honour, honestly, is the opportunity to do and study what I love. I get to work with fantastic students and speakers, and get to talk about what I'm interested in, and this is actually a job! I never forget how lucky I am that I actually love my work.

How important are students to your research endeavours?

The way I conceptualize research involves students in a very central role. My current project, in fact, is a result of wanting to involve undergraduate students. I've been interested in rural Canadian English since I was in graduate school, but now that I'm in an area where my students are part of the group I want to study, I can engage them in research and it can be relevant to them on a very personal level. I have undergraduate students interviewing family, friends and neighbours, transcribing, learning how to analyze language data, and learning audio editing, language archiving and acoustic analysis software. They are the local experts, I give them the tools, and we learn from each other. I see this blurring of research and teaching as my primary goal, in fact, where the goal is not so much "research" and "teaching", but rather learning.

If you had unlimited funds, which areas of research would you invest?

I would invest in an interdisciplinary centre to further the study and promotion of language on the Canadian Prairies, with labs and equipment for the experimentalists, databases for the corpus experts, and members from a host of related fields to discuss big questions: sociology, history, education, literature, psychology, neurology, speech pathology, computer science, etc., in addition to applied and theoretical linguists. Alberta in particular has a complex history and sociology of various linguistic groups emigrating over the last 100-plus years, seeking religious or economic freedom, and it has shaped the language(s) we speak in a particular way. These questions are as of yet largely untouched, especially in the Prairies, and in the rural context.

Each month, the Legend will present 5 Questions With . . . one of our researchers. For a look at the entire catalog of 5 Questions With . . . features, check out the Office of Research and Innovation Services website at www.uleth.ca/research/research_profiles. If you'd like to be profiled, contact Penny Pickles at pickpj@uleth.ca

This story first appeared in the April 2012 issue of the Legend. To view the entire issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

French Film Series debuts Thursday

trevor.kenney — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:05:39 +0000

If you like thrillers, Ciné-club cInéMAGINE and the Department of Modern Languages invites you to a screening of the French film, 5150, rue des Ormes (5150 Elm's Way).

The opening event to their French Film Series, the event goes Thursday, 7:30 p.m. in E690. The film is free and open to all.

Directed by Eric Tessier, this Quebec-produced film promises to bring audiences out of their seats. Following is a brief synopsis.

"My name is Yannick Bérubé. I'm a prisoner because I discovered a… a…" 5150 ELM'S WAY, the end of a quiet street in a nondescript town. After falling off his bike, Yannick finds himself at the mercy of a family that is anything but nondescript.

Jack Beaulieu is a righteous psychopath and fanatic chess player; his wife Maude is submissive, their teenaged daughter Michelle is threatening, and the young Anne's vacant look belies her father's guilt.

At last Beaulieu makes Yannick an offer: win at chess and he is free to go. Yannick becomes a pawn in a game in which he will lose either his mind or his life.

Summer program a Spanish expedition

trevor.kenney — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:10:23 +0000

This May, Luz Ospina, academic assistant, Department of Modern Languages, will accompany 11 ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students as they immerse themselves in the language and culture of Mexico City as part of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's pilot Spanish summer immersion program.

"Currently we offer a minor in Spanish, but we are in the process of developing a Spanish major. The six-credit immersion course came about because of that. We were also trying to create a relatively easy and efficient way for students to acquire oral fluency in the language," says Dr. Raquel Trillia, who teaches Spanish in the Modern Languages Department. "Immersion makes it much simpler. It is more natural."

The International Centre for Students (ICS) has played a major role in getting the program off the ground.

"The professors of modern languages came to us with the idea of doing an immersion program and asked for assistance finding a Spanish speaking university," explains Laura Ferguson, co-ordinator, International Programs and Exchange for ICS. "We have a long-standing exchange agreement with the Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City so we were able to use our contacts there and partner with them on the program."

Students, who must complete Spanish 1100 prior to leaving for Mexico City, will spend six weeks living with Mexican families. Monday to Thursday mornings, they will attend Spanish language classes at the university, studying all aspects of learning a language, including pronunciation, conversation, reading and writing. In the afternoons, they will be involved in various activities that will expose them to Mexican culture, art and history. They will also participate in guided field trips to enrich the cultural experience. The great bonus is that students will be continually immersed in the language: shopping, cooking, interacting with their hosts and learning about the culture through everyday experience.

"I would expect that the workload will be intense; they will be required to write papers and do presentations, and from that the students should achieve greater oral proficiency," says Trillia. "Students who come back to our classrooms having lived this experience are going to enrich our Spanish program. We are hopeful that this program will be successful and that we will be able to continue to run it in the future."

Evelyn Peters is one of the 11 students going to Mexico City.

"This is an awesome opportunity to learn the Spanish language hands-on. I expect to pick up the language much more quickly and have a better understanding of, not only the language, but also the culture," she says. "I plan to graduate with a BEd in Modern Languages. I will feel much better equipped to do this after spending time immersed in the language. I am very grateful for this opportunity. Vamos a Mexico!"

For more information, contact the Department of Modern Languages or the ICS, or send an e-mail to raquel.trillia@uleth.ca or laura.ferguson2@uleth.ca.

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