Conversation Clubs at the Engineering Faculty

To contextualize the origin of the Conversations Clubs, we need to say that the Faculty of Engineering  started with this practice a few semesters back.  A lot of students attended the Clubs with the support of the School of Language Sciences. It started with three courses: beginners, intermediate and advanced and the approach was Semantic-Communicative.

This proposal was coordinated from the Continuous Improvement Program (PMC) of the Engineering Faculty and the support of the Academic Vice-Dean of the Faculty.

Last October 2019, the English Conversation Clubs re-appeared, as a needed space for students to practice communicative skills; with the support of REDCAAL from the School of Language Sciences. It was very common to find students from different programs such as Agricultural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Food Engineering, Materials Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electric Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, and Topographic Engineering. As a requirement for the students to participate in these clubs, they were to be attending one the following courses: 1, 2, 3 or 4 English for academic purposes.

Due to the mandatory quarantine established by the government for the Covid-19 outbreak, the conversation clubs have been virtual. First of all, students registered themselves via institutional email providing sufficient data i.e. full name, program, and student’s code, English group, and the schedule they wanted to make part of. Ten to fifteen students per club were accepted in order to re-create themselves and have an enjoyable space.

The dynamics of the conversation clubs slightly changed during the confinement for social distance. There was a big wave of uncertainty that made mental and psychological conditions emerged; such as anxiety, stress, and depression.  The clubs then, were a liberating space where everyone could interact and express their overwhelming feelings about their academic load.

The mentioned activities were carried out in the Google Meet platform in an hour dynamic activity, where students gave opinions or answered questions about a relevant topic related to the engineering domain.

The School of Engineering offers its gratitude to Professor Marcela Castellanos, REDCAAL coordinator for her wisdom and commitment to this project and to Ana María Mosquera, Isabella Viáfara and Stephania Saez, students of the Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Languages.