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Jen
parto de la retejo kiun mi kreis por starigi
la LingvoFestivalon de la Universitato de
Illinois en 1999. Bonvolu noti, ke la
ligiloj de ĉi tiu retpaĝaro ne plu
funkcias. Sed oni povas bone utiligi
la principojn por organizi LingvoFestivalon.
Teachers
As a teacher, you are at the heart and
the core of the Festival of Languages. In
most cases, the teachers of the main
langauges such as Spanish, French, German,
Italian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese,
and so on, will come from the respective
foreign language departments--should these
departments so desire. For languages that
are rarely taught in school or at the
university such as minority languages,
native indian langauges, creoles, pidgins,
and so on, we ask the general public to
participate as teachers. If you are an
Eskimo, we invite you to share a part of
your language and culture with us. If you
are not an Eskimo, but have lived many years
in an igloo way to the north of us, we would
like to hear you as well!
Your job as the teacher is to give a
varied, 40-minute, fun and interesting
presentation of your language to the general
public. Your class is short, giving you
just enought time to show where the language
is spoken, give a couple of cultural details,
show an interesting grammatical point or two,
and teach a few useful phrases like: good
morning, how are you, where is the hotel, I
love you, I like this, etc.
You should adapt your class to the
general public: kids and their parents,
young students, old students, a couple of
linguists, grandpa with the grandkids, a
handful of mathematicians, and maybe an
ambassador or two! You may wish to say some
things in your language; you may wish to
write a couple of useful phrases. You will
probably always leave a few minutes at the
end of each class for questions like "How do
I say such and such in your
language?
In the weeks preceeding the Festival,
training sessions will be given. You should
attend one of these
two-hour courses. They are fun; my wife and
I do them!
If you would like to teach, please
contact Dennis or Nadia Keefe
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International Musicians
Do you sing in an African language?
Dance some of the great Latin American
dances? Have a group of Irish singers?
Play some instruments of the Andes, or the
Himalayas? Do something with music in a
foreign language. Then, read on.
The job of the musician is to add an
international background to the Festival of
Languages. Though music is not the star
of this Festival, it is certainly the salt
and the pepper that livens things up.
One job of the musicians is to play,
dance, or sing between the language classes.
This means that a given group will start
at 40 minutes past the hour, and finish at
50 minutes past the hour. Thus, you will be
performing only during those ten minutes.
You start exactly at 40 minutes after the
hour, because it is then that the courses
end. Your play will help us language
teachers stop our class when we should!
You finish playing at 50 minutes after
the hour because students will need those
precious ten minutes to find the next
language course that they want to attend.
The next class begins exactly on the hour.
It may also be possible to give
mini-concerts of, say, 30 minutes either
outside the Foreign Languages Building or,
perhaps, in the basement or elsewhere. We
have not yet decided on the exact location
and timing of the mini-concerts.
In addition, it may be possible to
participate in a special evening, follow-up
concert for the general public. More
information on this later. See also the
section for evening activities below.
To volunteer as a musician, please
contact the LinguaFest Director of Music,
Patrick Oray, of the YMCA, one of the
Festival's sponsors.
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Booths
If you or your department, association,
club, etc., would like to have a booth
during the festival that consists of one
table in either the main hall of FLB, or,
possibly near the entrances outside, please
sign up. Typically booths will be taken by
foreign language departments, international
organizations and associations, language
schools, etc.
To sign up for a booth, please contact
Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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Webmaster
You job would be to make continuous
improvements in the Festival of Langauges
web site, making it more attractive and more
effective. To do this, you probably have a
knack for artistic design, have a solid
grounding in HTML, and will probably enjoy
working with others to make translations of
the page.
To sign up as a webmaster, please contact
Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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Decorations
As a decorator, you will help put up the
general decorations for the Festival.
Rooms need to be decorated. So do hallways
and doors. Flags, pictures, newspapers with
foreign writing are all welcome additions to
the barren walls of FLB!
To volunteer to decorate, especially, if
you would like to be in charge, please
contact Dennis or Nadia Keefe
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Statistics
Your job is to count the number of
students that attend each class. Basically,
this is a very simple job, and is reasonably
fun. At any given hour, there may be as
many as 18 foreign language sessions. You
simply, about 15 to 20 minutes after the
start of each class, open the door and count
the students! No need to go back.
Counting once is enough.
Statistics are important to LinguaFest.
By knowing how many people come to each
language class, we can better plan the
classrooms for the coming year. In
addition, we can prepare the top ten list,
or top fifty, or top hundred as the case may
be. The press is always interested in the
results of the Festival, and the public is
curious to know.
To volunteer as a statistician, please
contact Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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Publicity
Your job is to tell the world about
LinguaFest. Newspapers, radio, television
are three primary media. Local contacts may
be made, and national as well. The last
Festival we organized in France was on
national prime time television news (TF1),
as well as national educational TV. Reports
on LinguaFest were also seen in several
European countries and even Africa! The
word got around!
Another big part of your job is to
attract the general public. LinguaFest is a
very nice weekend activity for a very wide
variety of people. University students have
always enjoyed LinguaFest, but it is also
popular with families, linguists, travelers,
senior citizens, and just about anyone who
is looking for a fun, educational, different
activity to do on a weekend.
To help out with the publicity, please
contact Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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Operations
Your job is twofold: first, to make sure
that the Festival runs on time; and second,
to make sure that schedules are visible and
classrooms marked.
You are critical to the success of the
overall festival. Classes need to start on
time, and even more importantly, they need
to finish on time. Some teachers (like
myself) will keep on talking past the
40-minute mark. We teachers need to be
reminded by a gentle opening of the door,
and an equally gentle reminder that the
international music has started and it is
time to come out and enjoy it!
Schedules, with the name of each language,
the class time of each language, and the
room number of each class, need to be placed
all over the Festival site, so that visitors
can clearly, easily, and correctly choose
the next foreign language lesson that they
want to see.
To volunteer to help out with operations,
please contact Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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After-Festival Evening
Activities
Your job is to coordinate and publicize
internationally-related activities that
occur after the Festival. For example, one
group might want to give an international
music concert at the YMCA (see Patrick Oray).
Another may want to run a foreign film.
Yet another might want to present a
travelogue.
To coordinate the after-festival
activities, please contact
Dennis or
Nadia Keefe.
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Teachers' Lounge
Your job is to find people to volunteer
to feed our teachers! I thought that we
could get one of the rooms downstairs and
have some tables and chairs where the
teachers could rest, meet other Festival
volunteers, and drink and munch on something.
We did this is Tours, France, and it was
very much appreciated by the Festival
volunteers.
To volunteer to run the Teacher Lounge,
please contact
Dennis or
Nadia Keefe.
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Clean Up
To volunteer to run the Clean Up, please
contact
Dennis or Nadia Keefe.
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Other
To volunteer for anything else, or if you
have an idea that you would like to try out,
please contact
Dennis or
Nadia Keefe
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Dennis Keefe, Copyright
1999
last updated January 22, 1999 |
