Registration for the Language Buddies program is open for the summer break! Coordinated through the Fries Center for Global Studies, Language Buddies is a program that matches Wesleyan students, faculty, or staff members with one another to practice their language skills over academic breaks through a series of self-paced, online conversational activities.

This initiative was first launched as the “Winter Language Buddies” in December 2020 and has run successfully every Winter and Summer break since. This program is a great way to keep up and improve your language skills, make new friends, interact in a different way with various members of the Wes community, as well as share your language and culture and help others get better at a language that you are fluent in.

In previous years, participants have had the opportunity to practice over 10 languages with their buddies. “It was very cool, as a student, to have a different relationship with a professor and to get to know someone from a more administrative part of Wesleyan too. One great thing about the buddies was that I actually improved my French language skills.”, remarked an anonymous student who participated in the Language Buddies. As part of this program, students also have the opportunity to interact with staff and faculty, who enjoy and benefit from the experience as well, evidenced by the following anonymous faculty testimonial: “It was great! My buddy and I originally prepared questions to work on, but eventually just started meeting and chatting about our weeks, which is, in my opinion, closer to what I would want to practice in the target language.”

Students have reported loving the low-stress environment that the Language Buddies program provides to practice their language. “I really like this chance to be able to practice my Japanese over the winter! It’s really fun and carefree, while still helping me improve,” remarked an anonymous student of Japanese. Another student mentioned a similar experience, noting that: “I loved chatting with my language buddy! I found it to be a fun and low stress way of practicing.”

Sign up is easy: choose the language(s) that you want to practice, enter your language level, your optimal number of buddies, how often you would like to meet and the preferred level of your buddies. You will later receive a follow up message to put you in touch with your buddies!

To register, please fill out this form or scan the QR code below! If there are any questions, please feel free to reach out to Emmanuel Paris-Bouvret and Thais García Bagué