By ERIN MARTIN
erin@du2.byu.edu
If you thought campus would be quiet Wednesday, think again. The High School Language Fair is happening until noon.
Thousands of secondary school students speaking German, French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese will experience a cultural and an educational morning.
Randall Lund, an assistant professor of Germanic and Slavic languages, said high school students have been coming to BYU for years to participate in the language fair.
'For those who can't go to the country, this becomes a major event for them,' said Lund, who is also this year's coordinator for the fair.
Although only one fair happens this morning, the five languages have their own activities and hold them in separate places, Lund said. Some people expressed concern about room availability, he said.
'We coordinate this with campus scheduling to minimize the impact and make sure there is space,' he said.
Lund said BYU hosts the fair as a service, and the fair agrees with BYU's mission to promote language study.
'The fair is very popular for students and teachers,' he said.
Department coordinators of the fair rely heavily on volunteers. Teacher assistants, students majoring in the language and other students participate as judges or staff cultural events.
Lund said the German department hosts a competition, impromptu conversations, poetry readings, music, skits and plays, and cultural events are prepared by schools as booths in 'Little Germany.'
Booths with other languages are different, he said. The French fair emphasizes cultural experiences with rooms where students enter a bakery or a bank. The Russian fair is an international competition, and the German fair is a local creation, Lund said.
'We expect to have more than 500 students from approximately 30 schools for the German students,' he said.
Gary Browning, professor of Germanic and Slavic languages, said about 150 Russian language students from high schools will come to participate in the language competition.
Students compete to see who qualifies to compete with the U.S. team, which competes in Russia against teams from other countries to see who the strongest team in the world is, Browning said.
'We're not only trying to find the few who will be eligible to compete, but for others to come and feel good about how much they learned and that there is hope to learn more,' he said.
Paul Warnick, an assistant professor of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, said about 200 students from a dozen schools will attend the Japanese fair this year.
'We have a variety of different kinds of activities, including a speech contest, a song contest and competitions relating to specific language skills,' Warnick said.
The Japanese fair will also include games such as Pictionary and Clue in Japanese. Students may also find themselves in mock situations where they can use their skills in shopping, buying a train ticket or making hotel reservations, he said.
The language fair is always held the first reading day in April.