Multilingual Natural Immersion Camp

Multilingual Natural Immersion Camp

Quite a mouthful, right?

Anyways, it's exactly what it sounds like. I played a group leader for the *gasp* MultilingualNaturalImmersionCamp we had at the Olympic Center in Tokyo. The camp was set up for future/potential Japanese exchange students (roughly about 16 years old) who will study abroad for one year. The purpose of the camp was to get them familiar with listening to and speaking English and other languages. Meaning, for the entirety of the camp (to my pleasure and their dismay), they could speak no Japanese - only English. Meaning, also, that I spoke nothing but English for two days. Which was a lot of fun, but at times, was really tricky.

We started with some ice breakers to help the suuuuper nervous kids loosen up a little. We had different activities for them to try out, like learning how to express themselves with body language and facial expressions, which is majorly important if they plan to communicate outside their mother country.

We also did some positive thinking assignments, where the kids had to partner up, introduce themselves to their partner, and state one thing they dislike. Then, their partner would think of positives to that thing, trying to make the person see that thing in a different light, and ultimately, showing that there are more opinions and more sides to a story.

Then we had a What Would You Do time, bringing up a few issues that they may face while living abroad, and then having discussions about it. Very interesting. A lot of these kids seem really bright and really open-minded, which is going to help them a lot, I think. :)

The next day, the students all had to come up with a group presentation (which, by the way, they all did wonderfully). As group leaders, though, we were encouraged NOT to help them too much; but rather, we were there as support. The thought behind this was to have THEM come to US if they had questions. Another very important skill to have that I hope they can take with them to America/Germany/Brazil/Mexico/Wherever.

Good luck, kiddos! And be sure make your exchange experience a good one!!

And by the way, did you see this awesome sign my group came up with? They chose the name TEAM SMILE as their team name, after we had a few good talks about what's important as an exchange. ;D

I'm so proud of my group, they're growing up so fast...! ;__; (They also noticed I say "cool" a lot, so they added this little quote bubble to my signature haha, so cute.)