Our college campus unites students from over 60 countries who speak over 40 different languages. This project seeks to improve language and cultural exchange offers at Bard College Berlin both on and off-campus. It takes steps to build platforms to share these resources among students and with the Berlin community.
For the project, BCB native speakers of different languages volunteer to offer regular get-togethers and tutoring for other students on campus to develop their skills in languages not offered by BCB in academic courses. Starting in 2016 with Arabic, the project offered Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Russian in the 2017-2018 academic year. Participants and students from other institutions aiming to improve their language skills are invited to join the tutoring classes with Bard students. Lingo 101 works with external Berlin projects on language learning or tandem organizations such as such as Sprach- und Kulturbörse TU Berlin and HU Sprachbörse.
For the project, BCB native speakers of different languages volunteer to offer regular get-togethers and tutoring for other students on campus to develop their skills in languages not offered by BCB in academic courses. Starting in 2016 with Arabic, the project offered Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Russian in the 2017-2018 academic year. Participants and students from other institutions aiming to improve their language skills are invited to join the tutoring classes with Bard students. Lingo 101 works with external Berlin projects on language learning or tandem organizations such as such as Sprach- und Kulturbörse TU Berlin and HU Sprachbörse.
Student coordinator: Ibrahim Bozdemir
As a Turkish national who only learned how to speak proper Turkish at the age of 14 and who could not speak English fluently until university, the lack of opportunity to learn new languages has always troubled me. Given that German is the only language offered at BCB despite its international community, I was happy and motivated to further expand the existing Arabic 101 lessons, in which I had already participated in as a student myself.
As we say in Turkish, "One who speaks only one language is one person, but one who speaks two languages is two people." Lingo 101 draws inspiration from this saying.
Project testimonial
Ibrahim Bozdemir speaks about Lingo 101 at the 2018 Get Engaged student conference
Teacher Testimonials
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İbrahim Bozdemir
Turkish cannot be learned, but only experienced. I was there to make that experience real for the interested. -
Mariia MishchenkoRussian 101 was fun. At first I was curious but also a little hesitant to try teaching my mother tongue -- sure, I know it well enough, but could I help others learn? It turned out to be great and gave me an opportunity to think about my language in a way I hadn't before, not to mention it felt good to have taught others (even if only basics). -
Mohannad KaikanniLearning a new language always adds to your original language. When I learned English, I discovered many expressions that do not exist in Arabic. Thus, through teaching Arabic I wanted to show my English-speaking peers new expression that do not exist in their language. But again, I myself learned a lot through the questions of the participants. In my language I know “how” to say things correctly but in some cases I never thought about "why." We compared expressions and phrases between our different languages and this exchange truly stimulated my imagination and my thoughts beyond foreign language vocabulary.
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