Celebrating Multilingualism at the Vancouver Campus

From February 6-10, SFU celebrated the linguistic diversity of the SFU community at Multilingual Week at SFU.

Multilingual Week is an annual celebration and invites instructors, students and staff to attend workshops, talks, interactive booths and more to explore how our community’s diverse language skills can be leveraged to create more inclusive and engaging spaces in the classroom and beyond.

In partnership with SFU’s Centre for Educational Excellence, SFU Student Engagement and Retention, and SFU Lifelong Learning, SFU’s Vancouver campus was thrilled to participate in this university-wide initiative and host fun language-themed activities at Harbour Centre throughout the week. Engaging activities like trivia, mini language labs, and crafting connections were enjoyed by the many students who stopped by to participate.

The daily whiteboard activity was popular, and encouraged thoughtful and interesting conversations around multilingualism. Questions like “What is the best part about being multilingual?” or “What motivates you to learn a new language?”, were written on the whiteboard daily and it was wonderful to see so many students, staff and faculty participating and sharing their responses with us. At the end of each day, a rich and interesting snapshot of our community’s diversity was captured.

The Games Lounge was also set up and many students and staff enjoyed ping pong, giant Checkers, Cornhole, boardgames and more. Lots of prizes were also given away!

A warm thank you to everyone who volunteered for and attended Multilingual Week 2023. Please stay tuned for future Multilingual Week activities!