Four Language Days at Montclair State
Posted in: Institute for the Humanities
Four major outreach events for high school foreign language students will be held on campus again this year. Three of them, as last year, will be co-hosted by Montclair State’s Institute for the Humanities, and the other — Italian Language and Culture — will be hosted by Montclair State’s Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America in collaboration with the Italian Teachers’ Association of New Jersey (ITANJ). Classics Day will take place on October 31, 2014, Spanish Day on November 21, 2014, French Day on February 6, 2015, and Italian Language and Culture Day on March 25, 2015.
At Classics Day, participating high school students choose two of four presentations to attend. This is followed up by a contest, in which groups of six students per school compete in Latin grammar, Roman civilization, and classical mythology. The three groups that get the most answers correct out of 99 questions in half an hour are awarded prizes! Classics Day was initiated by Dr. Victoria Larson, Director of the Institute for the Humanities and Professor in the Department of Classics and General Humanities, in 1990. Her model was an event she had herself attended as a high school student many years ago previously that had inspired her to become a Classics major in college. One of the goals of Classics Day, then, and this is also true of Spanish, French, and Italian Language and Culture Day, is to give high school students a pleasurable foretaste of the experience of studying languages at the college level.
French Day was offered for the first time in 2012 and was the brainchild of Dr. Elizabeth Emery, Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. It consists of a morning of presentations on a themed aspect of French culture — such as, in 2014 (which was organized by Dr. Kate Loysen, Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures), A la découverte du français dans le monde (“Exploring French Worldwide”). It is followed by a film festival in which schools entertain each other and compete for prizes with short movies they have made in French on the theme of the day.
Spanish Day, modeled on the successful format of French Day, took place for the first time this year under the direction of Dr. Anne Edstrom, Professor of Spanish in the Department of Spanish and Italian, and will be repeated again this November with the theme of Tesoros del mundo hispano (“Treasures of the Spanish World”).
For the last seven years, Italian Language and Culture Day has been the annual signature collaboration between Montclair State’s Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America under the leadership of Dr. Mary Ann Re and the Italian Teachers’ Association of New Jersey (ITANJ). Students (primarily from high school, but a few also from middle school) perform skits in Italian on a specific theme. Last year’s event took the theme of Un viaggio nel tempo: ieri e domani (“A Journey in Time: Yesterday and Tomorrow”). The skits are entirely written by the students themselves and feature scenery and costumes they have designed. As at the Classics, French, and Spanish Days, prizes are awarded for the best submissions.These four programs brought to campus last year a whopping total of 1244 students from a total of 83 New Jersey schools. Hopefully the turnout for this year’s language events will be just as spectacular!
Further information:
http://www.montclair.edu/chss/institute-for-humanities/upcoming-events/