Delving into different cultures

At Language and Culture Exchange Club, students get to know more about their friends’ and classmates’ cultures and languages.

Mission Statement of the Culture Exchange Club:

“The purpose of this club is to promote the exchange of languages and cultures between students. This club compliments the academic languages courses nicely, and provides an opportunity to learn about other cultures as well as languages in a fun manner. We welcome language learners to join our club and improve their skills by practicing with a native speaker. Meetings will promote diversity to provide students with a global mindset and international resources.”

The first meeting of Culture Exchange Club began on Tuesday September 19, 2017 with some ice-breaker conversations, in order for students to get to know each other. The club members consist of students from all around the world such as Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, China, Mexico, Brazil, Moldova and Algeria. The students were all very excited to meet and greet one another. Then, students discussed the club structure. Unanimously, we decided that we will focus on one theme each week and we will get a chance to share each culture to all the members. There are many themes that we are interested in talking about, such as food, school life, music, history, fashion and architecture. As time goes by, we might add even more interesting themes. By the end of our meeting, we taught each other how to greet in different languages. We all had so much fun. Before saying goodbye in our different languages, we decide that the next week’s theme would be “food.”

At our second meeting, we introduced traditional food from each country to the members, using photos to illustrate the different cuisines. Then, we taught each other some useful phrases that we can use when we go to a restaurant, like how to order food, how to request the check, and how to ask for recommendations. We had so much fun at that meeting, and we all left feeling great (and hungry!) from talking about so much food.

The theme of our third meeting was “school life.”  Although this meeting had fewer members participating compared to our previous reunions, we learned so many interesting facts about various educational systems from different countries. We talked about each country’s school curriculum, schedule, and uniform. We learned that each country has some similarities. At the end, we all agreed that we enjoy being at EF Academy, where we are so fortunate to meet people from all around the world!

Written by Kantasuda Rider, teacher at EF Academy New York