Celebrate February: Discover Languages Month

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How can YOU get involved?

At your school or university:

• Encourage students to participate in the ACTFL Video Podcast Contest!
• Plan schoolwide events that focus on students’ use and performance of the target language; publicize these events as part of  Discover Languages month.  Invite school administrators and local legislators to the event.
• Sponsor student contests that highlight your students’ knowledge of languages and cultures that will also bring attention from parents and the media to your language program.  Click here to download the official logo and guidelines for its use.
• Organize student activities and fundraisers that can be featured on the ACTFL Discover Languages web site.  The fundraiser can result in a donation to the Discover Languages effort or be used to purchase Discover Languages logo products for your students.
• Request that your administration declare a “Discover Languages Day” during February at your school in which the various languages are featured during the day and older students teach language lessons to younger students or perform for them.
• Download the official Discover Languages logo from the Discover Languages web site and use it on your school handouts and information that is shared with parents.
• Order Discover Languages promotional items to distribute on parent nights and program recruitment activities. Contact ACTFL at 703-894-2900 for Discover Languages products.
• Sponsor a “Visit to a Language Class” day and use it as an opportunity to show school staff, including guidance counselors as well as community representatives how languages are taught in our schools and universities.
• Universities can use this month for outreach and invite local high school students to visit the campus to learn about language and study abroad programs.
• Play segments of the Talkin’ About Talk radio series on languages for your classes or over the public address system.  These segments can be downloaded from the Discover Languages website, click here.
• Sponsor a quilt project in which students fashion squares with various languages or cultural aspects featured and then they are sewn together for the final language quilt.
• Organize a contest in which students design a commercial spot that promotes language learning. The video should relate to Foreign Language advocacy or the Discover Languages theme “Discover Languages...Discover the World.”
• Get involved with your local museums by having students serve as docents and conduct gallery tours of pieces in the museum’s collection in the target language. Language students can explain the work, and discuss the historical timeframe in which it was created.
• Organize an inter-active panel discussion around the topic "What I did with my language after high school?" Invite alumni back to share their testimonials as a means of advocacy for long-term study of languages.  Former students who are in law, medicine, divinity school, business, law enforcement, social work, etc. can provide an effective advocacy effort to encourage our underclassmen to continue their language study.

In your community:

• Encourage language learners to participate in the ACTFL Video Podcast Contest!
• Request that your mayor, town council and/or Board of Education issue a proclamation designating February as Discover Languages month in your community.  See www.discoverlanguages.org for sample proclamations. (Coming soon)
• Sponsor a “language ambush” in which your city or community is given a “grade” on how well languages are spoken.  Use it as an opportunity to get media coverage for the Discover Languages national promotion.  Step-by-step instructions are provided at here.
• Have language students post placards on their home mailboxes declaring “A Student of ______ Lives Here.”  They can also do this on their lockers at school.
• Sponsor communitywide activities in which your students’ knowledge of language and culture is featured.  These could include presentations at School Board meetings or for local community groups.
• Contact your local media and share the print ads, radio and television public service announcements that are available on the Discover Languages website.  Encourage them to run them in as many venues as possible!
• Involve your local libraries by asking them to post a Discover Languages poster or sponsor a language event such as older students reading in the target language to younger students or teaching a mini-lesson on a different language each week for the community.

Discover Languages month will be as successful as you make it in your local community.  Please submit ideas for activities to the bulletin board featured on the web site at www.discoverlanguages.org and send in your pictures so they can be featured on the web site.  Encourage your students and their parents to check out the web site periodically for the latest information about the benefits of language learning for a lifetime!