University Communications

Hannah Miller ’10 chats live from Fellows Hall with Hector, her Spanish tutor in Guatemala.

Language students know the anxiety and satisfaction of putting classroom learning into practice with a native speaker. It feels like a great leap, but then a parachute opens as the skills and vocabulary learned over time start to materialize and provide support. With a partner in conversation, new vocabulary and conjugation develop naturally, and in the context of its native country and culture, a second language comes to life.

Studying abroad is usually a language student’s first exposure to this experience, but with the help of technology and the Patty Foresman Fund, Denison’s modern languages department has introduced InterLangua, a program that brings students in Fellows Hall virtually face to face with Spanish-speaking tutors in Guatemala for weekly real-time conversations about language and culture.

Denison was among the first institutions to adopt this state-of-the-art live video conferencing program in the spring of 2007, and it’s proven to be particularly helpful in preparing students’ conversational skills and cultural understanding before they leave campus for semesters abroad.

These Denison students in the 1950s used state-of-the-art language lab records. InterLangua updates “listen and repeat” exercises with live, interactive conversation.

Hannah Miller ’10 hopes to study in Chile next year but didn’t have time in her academic schedule for a 4-credit Spanish class this semester, so Spanish professor Dosinda Garcia-Alvite is sponsoring an independent language study for her using the InterLangua program.

Hannah dons her headset and logs in each Monday at a computer station in Fellows Hall for a pre-scheduled hour-long chat with her Guatemalan tutor, Hector.

“I expected it to be more like lessons, but our conversations come naturally from the topics we discussed the week before,” Miller observes. Beginning with small talk about local weather and customs, Hector then coaxes her through more complex vocabulary in areas like ecology and politics.

InterLangua tutors also are trained to work with students interested in expanding their language abilities into more specialized areas, like biology and medicine.

A window on the computer monitor prompts Hannah with subject matter for conversation by showing the news headlines from Guatemala City, and a smaller instant messaging whiteboard screen can be used by Hector to display unfamiliar vocabulary words as he pronounces them. 

A Denison language professor in 1947 works with the technology of the time to “offer extra drill in pronunciation, intonation and understanding of the foreign tongue.”

Hand gestures and facial expressions are a critical part of expression when words are limited, and two camera-image windows allow Hector and Hannah to watch each other as they speak.

Miller says her tutor “pantomimes a lot, especially verbs,” making the experience immediate and lively, the next best thing to being together in the same room. “I try to push myself more each time we speak,” she says, “to be involved in the conversation rather than just listening and responding to his questions.”  

Miller has found that the live interactions have helped her to identify her language weaknesses and also to gain confidence in her ability to use the tools she does have to work through the process of communication.

Hector tweaks her sentence construction and pronunciation on the spot, giving Miller instructive feedback and encouragement at the same time.

Cheryl Johnson, instructional technologist for the Denison University Department of Modern Languages

Besides offering Guatemalan Spanish, which is considered to be a desirably pure “accent-neutral” form of the language, Interlangua is in the process of adding Chinese-language instructors from the University of Shenzhen to their stable of tutors.

Cheryl Johnson, instructional technologist for the Department of Modern Languages, hopes to make use of that new opportunity at Denison.

“I truly believe that this is an industry that will continue to grow and be very beneficial to our students,” she says. “It will give us an opportunity to push our students to new levels of cultural understanding and language competency.”