Gilles Fontgalland is currently a fourth-year student at the university majoring in neuroscience with minors in psychology and economics. He is also the president of the Spanish and Portuguese club here on campus.
Why were you interested in the Spanish and Portuguese club?
Gilles: “I am originally from Brazil and have moved back and forth between Ohio and my hometown in Brazil. After enrolling at OSU, I wanted to join a group where I could talk to other people who spoke Portuguese so I could continue my proficiency in the language. Since I am a native speaker, I also wanted to be able to share my language skills with others. I heard about the SPPO club from one of my friends in a linguistics class my sophomore year and I enjoyed the goal and objective of the club, so I knew this was the place I wanted to be.”
Before hearing about the club from his friend, Gilles had no idea this club existed his first year on campus. He saw a gap with how the club is advertised to students across campus and has been trying to expand their advertising ability through the club’s initiatives.
What are the initiatives the club is taking to promote Spanish and Portuguese?
Gilles: “We noticed the club was lacking in extracurricular events our members could join but that are open to all the university. We started hosting movie nights where we have showings of audio and visual media that we use as contextualized inputs for students learning Spanish and Portuguese. They are able to see how the vocabulary and sentence structure are used given the context of the visual media.
Another initiative we started is having a book club. Literature is similar to movies, but it is a lot more language dense. It requires learners to be at a higher stage because there is no audio or visual media to help contextualize the language. The benefit of books is that it increases vocabulary as there are more words per page. We work through passages together to go over vocabulary terms and sentence structures.
Our most ambitious project is what we call the learning plan. It is going to be a program that will target all learners at the major stages of language learning. We want to make a series of steps that are practical and complementary to what they learn in class. The plan is going to entail several things: texts, audiovisual media, and online resources to connect with other speakers at their level. The board members and I think it is also important to learn the linguistic approach to languages, so we are also going to introduce resources on how the language you’re learning functions on the syntactic and grammatical level. By making this plan, we will have a foundation so people at all levels can use it to improve their language proficiency.”
How does the club tie in Spanish and Portuguese culture?
Gilles: “When the board members and I came into the administration, we set out objectives for the club, and obviously the primary objective is to assist and improve students’ language learning on a practical level. Our second objective was to raise awareness and improve discussions of topics surrounding the cultural aspects of the nations that utilize Spanish and Portuguese. We have many members who have studied abroad, have interest in moving abroad, or have family members abroad, so we are passionate about promoting the cultural aspects of these countries. We bring in texts and movies from different genres and different artistic movements from various countries in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. It is important to become familiarized with the culture of the places you will be visiting because language is part of the culture and learning the culture can help you understand how to use certain vocabulary terms. They go hand in hand.
We started hosting cooking exploration events on campus where we take a culturally relevant dish from one of the Spanish and Portuguese countries and recreate it together as a group. We have someone who is interested and acquainted with cooking that dish share the culture surrounding it with our members. It is important to highlight this cultural aspect and it is something we hope to continue in the coming semesters.”
Who is the target audience of the SPPO club?
Gilles: “Being an Ohio State student organization, our target audience has to be the students at OSU. We noticed the graduate club was not functional, so we expanded our club to also include graduate students. In addition, we also welcome community members. People who are not students at the university, but they are part of the community around OSU, live in the surrounding neighborhood, or partake in extracurricular events promoted by OSU. We also welcome alumni; those who are not students anymore, but still want to engage with the club. We have a few community members and alumni who frequent our conversation tables and events. Overall, our target audience are people who want to acquire the language and use it in a practical sense. Our club is a compliment for students that want to improve their conversational and comprehension ability.”
The Spanish and Portuguese club holds their conversation tables Monday through Friday either in-person in Crane Café in Hagerty Hall or virtually via Discord. To see their updated schedule and join their Discord server, please visit their club page on our website.
