UMaine to Host World Languages Day April 11

More than 100 area high school students will convene at the University of Maine on Friday, April 11 to celebrate World Languages Day with traditional dance lessons and a campuswide scavenger hunt.

Students from Foxcroft Academy as well as Bangor, John Bapst Memorial, Hermon and Orono high schools will attend. School teams will compete in a culture bowl to answer questions about geography, holidays, famous people, history and current events related to their language studies. The two languages highlighted will be French and Spanish. World Languages Day, scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., will also include opening and closing ceremonies and lunch in Memorial Union. Judges will be selected from UMaine faculty, staff and advanced students.

UMaine students, many from the Modern Languages and Classics Department, will teach crafts and guide students around campus. In addition, master folk dancer Cindy Larock will teach traditional French-Canadian dancing.

Danielle Beaupre and Maria Sandweiss, lecturers in French and Spanish, respectively, planned the event. The last World Languages Day was in 2009; it has been revived in 2014 thanks to sponsorship from the Department of Modern Languages and Classics, The Canadian-American Center and the Foreign Language Association of Maine (FLAME).