Class, local immigrants correspond as pen pals

Rebecca Wolpin, a graduate student in the Spanish and Portuguese Language Department, was impressed with the linguistic capabilities of her students at the beginning of the semester.

So impressed, she said, that she decided to put their Spanish-speaking skills to use outside the classroom. "I thought, 'We have to do something with this,' " she said.

As a result of that inspiration, the students of SPA 105 have spent the semester exchanging letters with a Spanish-speaking group not far from the University - participants in the English as a Second Language program at the YWCA in Princeton.

Wolpin said she knew she wanted her students to participate in a pen-pal exchange with native Spanish speakers but wasn't sure where to find them. After briefly considering joining forces with a university class in another country, Wolpin decided to look closer to home.

"I frantically looked around for a group," she said. "I decided to look around and see what sort of resources we have in Princeton because I know that we have a huge immigrant community in Princeton."

Though separated from the University campus by only a few miles, the YWCA group is far removed from the average Princeton class. The ESL students come from nine different countries, ranging in age from 25 to over 60.

As Wolpin put it, "they were a very different group of people than my freshmen."

At first, those differences made a meaningful epistolary exchange seem unlikely, according to Kelly Matula '09.

"I was initially excited to be able to practice my Spanish and get to know someone from another culture, but I was also somewhat skeptical," she said in an email. "I thought that my pen pal and I would not have much in common, because she is an adult from another country. I wasn't sure there would be much that we would both be interested in."

As the semester progressed, however, the correspondents found common ground on topics both personal and political.

"We wrote about everything from our families to the prevalence of poverty in the world. It was great," Matula said.

The exchange culminated in a party on Dec. 3, when students and their pen pals met in person for the first time. Wolpin said the event exceeded her greatest expectations.

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"My students really impressed me," Wolpin said. "The two groups were really different, not only because of the age difference, and language difference and cultural difference. It's one thing to exchange letters and another thing to actually meet these people and have a conversation going. It worked phenomenally well."

Matula's pen pal, Marcela, couldn't make the party that day because of an illness, but she said she looks forward to meeting her someday.

"From watching what it was like for my classmates to meet their pen pals, I can imagine how nice it will be when I finally do get to meet Marcela," Matula said.

In addition to the personal relationships she and her classmates developed, Matula said, the pen pal program worked well as an academic tool. "I think my ability to use Spanish to discuss abstract things like beliefs improved very much over the course of the semester," she said.

Wolpin will be in Argentina for the spring semester to work on her dissertation, but she said Spanish and Portugese lecturer Luisa Duarte-Silva Barry has expressed interest in continuing the pen pal project during her absence.

She said the deconstruction of stereotypes and the discovery of shared experiences was the most rewarding result of the project for her students.

"I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about nonnative English-speaking immigrants and people who have a hard time with their English," Wolpin said. "There is often a lot of impatience towards them. It is difficult for them to speak Spanish, and I think that they'll have more patience with non-English-speaking immigrants [now that they have corresponded with them]."

She added, "I think the cross-cultural element of this is very important."