For my experiential learning, I opted to participate in the multilingual chat hour at ODU. Every Wednesday, a group of students would get together from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds and talk about our various cultures and learn words from other languages. Most of the students learned English as a second language. but there were a couple of native English speakers like me. Our activities in the multilingual chat hour were mostly geared toward language learning. Early on, there was a student who was an ASL interpreter, and I remember learning the signage for “I understand.” It involves pointing your finger up as if to indicate having an idea or an epiphany, and it made sense. Then, we played a game called taboo, which I had previously not played. The game involved making people guess a word by describing what it was using words other than those listed on the card. For example, if the mystery word was “millionaire,” the person would see that at the top of their card, and beneath it there would be 4 easily usable “forbidden” words, such as “money,” “dollars,” “rich,” and “million.” At first, I thought that the native English speakers have an unfair advantage over the ESL students, but I learned that even native English speakers could get a healthy language exercise from it and learn strategic competence skills. The game was fun, and everyone enjoyed playing it. Then we started talking out food from other cultures and even brought in recipes. I shared a recipe for strawberry pie, and I took home a recipe for peri peri chicken and classic chili.

Then, later in the semester, participation waned, and the group got smaller, so we mainly started to learn vocabulary words from other languages. Most of the words that I got to learn were from Igbo, a Nigerian language, as well as some Yoruba.

This experience has mainly exposed me to people of other cultures and other people who were interested in learning other languages. During middle and high school, I was one very few people who actively enjoyed learning French, and it is nice to meet other people who share this interest. It has inspired me to continue my pursuit of linguistics and to get back into learning Russian. Learning languages is valuable to me because every new language learned is an open door into a culture previously unknown. Also, this experience has inspired me to adopt an approach to TESL where I not only teach students English but also invite them to share their own language backgrounds so that we can learn from each other. I will also adopt the “taboo” game to help my students practice English and expand their vocabulary.