Title:
Study-Abroad Programs Take Deeper Dive Into Local
Culture
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Each year about two hundred fifty thousand Americans
study in other countries. Some study-abroad programs
are trying harder to get students to learn about the
local culture. One student on his first morning in
Beijing was brought to a distant part of the city.
He received money and instructions how to get back.
It took some time but he succeeded. Professor
William Finlay says challenges like this help
students experience another culture. He heads the
sociology department at the University of Georgia in
the United States. He says: "It's absolutely crucial
that they know something about how people in other
parts of the world live and think and how they
behave. Often those students go in large groups and
they hang around with each other. We felt that they
really weren't getting to know the local
inhabitants." In two thousand eight, Professor
Finlay started a program with South Africa's
Stellenbosch University. The program combines
traditional classroom learning with community
involvement through a nongovernmental organization.
He says: "We've been working with a particular NGO
in the township and they do two things: they run a
number of these creches, which are basically day
care centers for children whose parents are working,
and the library in the community where there are
some computers. Our students typically work either
with the little kids in the day cares or they work
in the library and teach very basic computer skills
to mostly young adults." Hillary Kinsey is studying
international affairs. She spent three weeks in the
Stellenbosch program. She says, "It was interesting
to learn the history of the area and the recent
development with democracy and that sort of thing,
and then talk to these people and see what the
social dynamics were, what the ethnic divisions
were, how certain groups felt about other groups."
When Ms. Kinsey returned from South Africa, she and
other students in the program created a nonprofit
organization. "We called it Ubunto, which is a South
African concept coined by Desmond Tutu, and it means
'I am because we are.' The idea is kind of based
around relationships within society and what
generates prosperity for the whole. And so we kind
of took that notion and translate into a larger
international community." She says the goal is to
help improve education and development in South
Africa. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex
Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
