As avid language learners, all three of us wanted a chance to regularly practice the languages we were learning in the classroom. Through Conversations Unbound’s programs at Vassar College, we have not only had opportunities to work on our foreign language skills, but we have also grown personally and professionally. Let us tell you how and why this program needs to stay at Vassar for all future language-learners.
“I miss asking for ‘un café con leche’ at the school dining hall in Madrid.” -Michelle Wu
All of Vassar’s language programs emphasize learning the language through the culture, and we are fortunate to have opportunities to take classes where we are engaging with complex cultural aspects while strengthening our speaking, reading, listening and writing skills. Through Conversations Unbound, we are able to build on this strong foundation in the classroom and be further exposed to different people and different cultures. Every week, I find myself looking forward to laughing over the challenges of learning both French and Spanish at the same time with my conversation partner, Léon. He lives in Mexico City, though he’s from Burkina Faso, so I quickly discovered that both of us have/are learning Spanish and French. And while I get to hear about his favorite Burkinabè dish that he misses and as we discuss the escalating conflict in his home country, I feel like a real friendship has developed when I thought I was just practicing my Spanish.
“It’s hard to find that first word — my mind is buzzing. I want to feel less anxious to start a conversation in Arabic.” -Michael LaCivita
This is now my third year studying Arabic at Vassar, and on reflection, I realized that the close-knit community of Vassar’s Arabic program was a critical reason why I have continued my studies and remained dedicated to achieving proficiency in this language. It is essential to feel comfortable with the people you practice your language with, and in Vassar’s Arabic Studies community, I have found that this strong support system is integral to supporting my language-learning. Speaking with my Conversations Unbound partner, Alaa, became an extension of this close-knit community. Our video calls were daunting at first, but through simple, informal chats where we discussed his life and mine, he helped me learn to trust myself and feel confident in my speaking abilities. He often pushed me to “think less, just speak!” and soon the jitters, questions and hesitations before speaking started to subside. I never expected our simple conversations to naturally jumpstart my speaking abilities, and this was because of the connection I was (unconsciously) building with Alaa. Now I not only have the support of the Arabic program, but a conversation partner who also cares about me and my progress in learning this language.
“Speaking another language has begun to feel natural again. ” -Julia Segal
I felt stressed when starting a conversation in Spanish. I grew up speaking Spanish regularly, both in a dual-language program in my elementary school, and with my grandmother, who was born and raised in Panama. She is fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and English, and because of this, language has always been an integral part of my life and a source of connection to my heritage. However, while speaking Spanish over Friday night dinners with my grandmother came naturally, the idea of speaking Spanish in an academic context as I started college was quite intimidating. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a simple chat with my conversation partner, Karen, on anything from our favorite TV shows, to our shared love of cooking and baking, immediately helped to allay my stress. Soon, our conversation sessions became the highlight of my week and felt like an incredibly accessible and non-intimidating way of practicing language.
Inspired by these rich conversations and our partners’ enthusiasm, each of us joined the Conversations Unbound team as volunteers with the hope that we could help facilitate similar, beyond-just-language experiences to more students. Yet, volunteering with Conversations Unbound is about much more than just supporting language-learning. First, it expands our understanding of the privileges that we—students attending a private liberal arts college—often take for granted. We forget that access to stable internet connections is not a guarantee for all our conversation partners, so supporting the conversation partners, despite these challenges, is a learning opportunity for both our team and students alike.
At Vassar, professors work hard to teach us about the world outside of the life we are accustomed to. In the Decolonizing Digital Culture Hispanic Studies course, for example, we discuss necro-politics and the role technology plays in perpetuating the consequences of colonization. Yet despite the rich classroom discussions and insightful readings, seeing these theoretical concepts in reality adds a critical nuance and practical application to what we are learning in the classroom. Our time with Conversations Unbound and our conversation partners allows us to break down the academic wall between ourselves and the material we are learning, deepening our understanding of the world around us in a way that just reading and writing academic papers cannot accomplish.
Further, as we respond to questions and troubleshoot issues between partners and students, we learn what it practically entails to see all sides, communicate effectively, mediate problems and build professional relationships. Students and conversation partners come from potentially very different backgrounds, yet rather than finding solutions that simply “make everyone happy,” we’ve learned that by encouraging each side to adopt a more critical lens about their partner and the situation, they can better understand each other, better communicate and have better conversations.
Problem-solving also requires strong communication skills. With Conversations Unbound, this means learning how to communicate in varied ways via different languages, as well as different styles and modes of communication. For instance, we tend to use voice memos when troubleshooting issues with conversation partners so the intonation and emotion of a typical conversation are not lost, despite the lack of physical human connection. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to communication, so adapting how we communicate best with students, professors and partners has been a steep, though important, learning curve.
Our respective managerial roles overseeing the programming help us build practical leadership skills. Yet with Conversations Unbound, leadership means taking a backseat. While we are in charge of facilitating the student-partner interactions, it is crucial that the conversation partners’ needs and preferences drive the program decisions, protocols and policies—not us. Good leadership means actively engaging with our partners on a weekly basis, listening to their feedback and then acting on it. For us, being in a role of authority actually means remaining in the backdrop and enabling conversation partners to define the organization. The value of participating in a program that guides us as leaders and speakers cannot be overstated.
Lastly, up until this point we have discussed the benefit of Conversations Unbound to us. Through Conversations Unbound’s programming, partners have earned over $100,000 to date, some of which goes to paying for rent, school fees, work permits, among other needs, and we are proud to be part of a small, startup organization that continues to make a real impact.
Based on our experiences as both students participating in the Conversations Unbound program and as members of the dedicated all-volunteer team, we believe this program is critical to language-learning at Vassar and must remain embedded in language-learning curricula so that future students not only benefit from the rich cultural exchange, but also develop lasting friendships and have the opportunity to be a part of an organization that is truly making an impact on people’s lives. Since the Arabic program at Vassar is small in size compared to the Spanish and French programs, our Arabic conversation partners rely heavily on students’ willingness to participate and engage with Conversations Unbound. Arabic-learning students are able to learn from this rare cultural exchange, while also playing an important role in changing the lives of our conversation partners. We urge all language-learning students at Vassar to take advantage of what Conversations Unbound has to offer and thus support our mission to enhance the language-learning experience and empower our conversation partners.
Conversations Unbound is a nonprofit organization, established in 2015 through a collaboration of Vassar students, professors and alumnae/i to enable displaced people to work as language conversation partners, reconfiguring traditional power dynamics by situating displaced people as experts imparting knowledge, as opposed to passive recipients of aid. The program was integrated as a required component of language-learning curriculum in Vassar’s Arabic language program in 2016, then into Hispanic Studies courses in 2017 and later into French and Francophone Studies courses in 2020. All three language programs continue with Conversations Unbound today, and the organization also has consistent programs at Ohio State University and Michigan State University.