Universidad de Concepción students meet St. Cloud State students via Skype. The students would go on to conduct discussions throughout the fall semester.
Lessons in Elizabeth Valencia-Borgert’s Spanish 220 class went way beyond the basics fall semester when students teamed up with counterparts studying English at the Universidad de Concepción.
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The students met for 50 minutes each week with partners from the Chilean university over Skype to talk about their universities and cultures. The students spent half the time conversing in English and the other half in Spanish.
In addition to learning a foreign language, many of the students also connected over science.
Milena Leiva’s Concepción students are all Vegetal Biotechnology students in Ingles Comunicativo I and II classes, and 30 percent of the St. Cloud State students are in a science-related major.
They also prepared reports about their personal interactions with their Chilean partners. At the end of the semester the classes connected via Skype to give presentations.
The Concepcion students presented short videos about Chile connected with their field of study.
Valencia-Borgert and Leiva are already planning to incorporate more student interactions for their spring semester courses.
The experience allowed the students to create new friendships and brought down cultural barriers, said Valencia-Borgert, who has conducted similar exchanges with other Latin American universities.
“It brought the language and the culture to life,” she said. “It ceased to be a chapter in the textbook. They had the chance to experience it first hand, not read about it or hear it from third parties.”
