[lg policy] football as a second language

[Harold Schiffman]

Football as a Second Language [image: Football as a Second Language 1]

John Eisele, COLORADO STATE U.

For about 100 students who hail from countries where American-style football
is a puzzlement, Colorado State U. offered a gametime seminar in the stands.

**
Few introductory cultural-studies classes conclude at a college football
game. But at Colorado State University this fall, the tailgate became a
study session and the stadium bleachers a classroom for 100 recently arrived
international students.

 Student and alumni volunteers, along with a university athletics official,
gave a "Football 101" orientation session two weeks before the Rams' season
opener, explaining the positions, the down system, and Colorado State's
fight song. On game day, the university treated the students to a pizza
tailgate party and free tickets to the game, where the volunteers explained
the action on the field.

The goal: to make international students comfortable enough with football to
start attending games regularly.

"There's a sort of universal love of sports," says Mark Hallett, director of
international-student services at Colorado State. But the rules of
football—both on the field and in the stands—can be hard to translate. Many
international students react as Americans would at a cricket match, he says:
"It's interesting, but I don't understand it."

Darshan Shah, who sits on the alumni association's board, proposed the
session after years of talking with former international students who work
with him in Silicon Valley. They had wanted to learn more about football,
they told him, but were afraid to participate without understanding the
traditions surrounding the game.

While some colleges have offered football seminars for women, organizers
believe that Colorado State's orientation is the first one for international
students. (American men who can't tell a quarterback from a cornerback are,
it seems, still out of luck.)

Teaching the rules of football, the volunteers found, was more complicated
than they had expected. Also difficult: getting international students to
memorize the lyrics to Colorado State's fight song, with words like
"asunder" and "stalwart" that are unfamiliar to students for whom English is
a second language.

"Trust me," says Mr. Shah. "That was not the easiest thing to teach them."
http://chronicle.com/article/Football-as-a-Second-Language/48595/

>>From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 2, 2009--
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Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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