On 4/10/18, the Language Commons hosted UVA’s first Last Language Standing Challenge, a competition in which teams battled to keep their team’s language in use for an entire day. It was an experiment in ‘competitive language practice’ that sought to encourage language use outside of the classroom through a bit of friendly rivalry.
When the challenge ended at 4pm, more than 350 students, faculty, and staff had participated in the challenge by chatting and playing games in their world languages (Team Hebrew even did some karaoke). Six language teams managed to win by keeping their languages in use for a full six hours. Twelve teams participated, representing half of UVA’s taught world languages. Student speakers of Amharic even fielded a team of their own! Congratulations to the winning teams:
- American Sign Language
- Chinese
- French
- Hebrew
- Japanese
- Russian
LLS was a hit with language students and faculty: participants reported having lots of fun, staying on for hours to chat, play games, take advantage of the free food, and meet new people. Some even participated in multiple teams, utilizing their multilingual skills!
The LLS Challenge indicated a clear interest, on the part of UVA students, in putting their world languages to use for meaningful communication. As we plan for the 2018-19 academic year, the Language Commons will be exploring new ways to support this interest, in coordination with other UVA organizations, world language programs and student organizations!