More often than not, a foreign language course materialises at the Auroville Language Laboratory (ALL) through a play of serendipity.
The Spanish course that gets off the blocks from Monday is one such case of lucky happenstance.
The regular teacher had gone off to Spain for some personal work and even as ALL administrators were thinking hard about a surrogate, a volunteer turns up in Maria Victoria, a faculty from Spain who has been teaching the language to foreign students for years together.
“We have known each other for a while. And, Ms. Victoria had always been keen on engaging with Auroville,” says Mita Radhakrishnan, ALL Director.
The teacher was in Nepal when the earthquake occurred and was left distraught by the scale of human tragedy.
“For Maria, it was like the whole world had stopped. She is coming to Auroville as she believes the experience will also help her put the tragedy and the pain behind her and move on,” said Ms. Radhakrishnan.
From Monday, Ms. Victoria will handhold a bunch of new language learners through the quintessence of South American culture, especially Hispanic heritage.
About a dozen queries have already come in and ALL expects more enrolments in the next few days.
On Saturday, the ALL hosted a first meeting between aspirants and the teacher.
The ‘Fast Track Spanish Immersion Course’ will be held on three days a week over three weeks.
Apart from spoken Spanish and lessons in reading and writing, the course will also have a high fun quotient through activity sessions, games, film shows and quiz.
The ALL will run the course again in July.
Since its founding in 1988, the ALL’S motto has been to “ensure that even single-digit nationalities in Auroville such as Austrian, Brazilian, Hungarian or Slovene will find facilities to keep in touch with their native tongue.”
“However, commencement of a foreign language course depends on the availability of a volunteer,” said the ALL director.
Some of the language courses which are offered at any given time include English, French, Italian, Tamil, Hindi and Sanskrit.
In January this year, the ALL launched for the first time a certified German language learning course.
The German Beginners Certification Course is a two-and-a-half month beginners version that packs about 60 hours of class is administered by Erika Eggemann, a German tutor who has chosen Auroville as her home.
The course designed to help students prepare for the A1 Certification exam to be held at Max Mueller Bhavan in Chennai has been attracting some very positive feedback, says Ms. Radhakrishnan.
“Our students clocked a 100 per cent success rate for the examination. The Max Mueller Bhavan team was also impressed at the quality of the students who came through Auroville Language Lab. Next year, if we manage 40 students overall across all levels, they might even declare the ALL as an exam centre for the German certificates,” she said.
