Conversation Partner Program

The purpose of the Conversation Partner Program is to help international students adjust to life in Amerca and exchange languages. You learn about the culture and learn about your own culture, too, by helping a foreign student in this program. The Conversation Partners program adds to this a chance for a real conversation with a native speaker of English, on topics of mutual interest. The partners then meet for about an hour a week, making up their own schedule as they see fit. The goal is to spend at least half of the time speaking in English. If the partner who speaks English is trying to learn the native language of the ELI student, the partners will spend about half of the time speaking in that language. This is their chance to learn the slang, the culture, and the nuances of discussing everyday life.

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I started to volunteer in the Fall of 2018, in my first semester at the University of Florida. I was randomly paired with a student from China and we met at a local coffee shop. We were both nervous since I didn’t know any Chinese and my partner Piao enrolled as a true beginner in English, so she didn’t know much English. For the first few meetings, we used a lot of hand gestures and relied heavily on Google Translate. But, even though we had a language barrier, we were able to get along really well and started to hang out multiple times a week apart from the Program. I would show her around campus and introduced her to typical American fast food and at other times, she would cook for me traditional meals from her country and we would eat dinner together. We were both new students and quickly became each other’s first friend. We celebrated birthdays together and go to campus events. I thought I signed up to just teach an international student about American culture, but I also learned so much from Piao about her culture and customs. It became an intercultural exchange and created the basis for an everlasting friendship.  

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