Emily Ruel, Foreign Languages Program Alum, January 2011, is currently finishing work toward her BA degree at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, in North Adams.  She has granted us permission to post her final project for her SPA 202 class.  Emily spent six weeks reading a news story of her choice in a Bolivian newspaper, online.  She (as Palomita Sánchez de Reca) summarized the issues she learned about and then commented on the impact the story had on her own (invented) life.  In her final project, she created this video, in which she presents the news as if she, herself, were broadcasting the story.

Watch Emily Ruel’s outstanding video, below.

Students in Spanish at BCC adopt an Hispanic alter ego and write most of their compositions and video projects in the “voice” of their adopted identity.  This project is called Segunda vida.  It has evolved since our students began doing these cultural projects, in the fall of 2007.  Our students presented their work on their Segunda vida projects at the NECTFL (Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), in New York; at Middlebury College for the NEFDC (New England Faculty Development Conference) and on campus in the Spring of 2009.  We have been invited back to NECTFL for their Spring 2012 conference to present on Segunda vida 2.0.  Teachers at other schools have adapted Segunda vida for their French classes.  BCC students and their instructor will present along with these teachers at NECTFL, this spring.