UCF hosted the STARTALK program for students learning Russian for the third year, made possible by grant funding and associate professor Dr. Alla Kourova.
The program is part of several initiatives for learning Russian that the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures provides. Participants took part in extra-curricular activities including a STARTALK photo contest and field trips to the Holocaust Museum, Russian American community Center, Orthodox Church, and plays in Russian. They’ve also received visitors such as the famous singer Sardor Milano.
STARTALK’s mission is to increase the number of U.S. citizens learning, speaking, and teaching critical need foreign languages. The program offers students (K–16) and teachers of these languages creative and engaging summer experiences that strive to exemplify best practices in language education and in language teacher development.
For Dr. Kourova, “The Russian program at UCF subscribes to the philosophy that you cannot understand a foreign culture unless you speak the language. The motto of the program is: If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart.”
To read more about the STARTALK program, please see here.