Cambios / Changes to Our Blog

Nuestro blog ha cambiado un poquito para darles a los participantes en Conversaciones en su Comunidad una manera más fácil para encontrar información actualizada sobre los grupos y ver noticias sobre el programa. Espero que sea de utilidad. Esperamos tener diferentes páginas eventualmente para varios idiomas extranjeros; hasta entonces, tendremos español e inglés en esta página para hacerla accesible a la mayoría de nuestros usuarios.


Our blog has changed a bit to give volunteers and participants in Community Conversations an easier way to find updated information about groups, and read program news. We hope this page will be useful. We hope to have various pages someday soon for different foreign languages; until that time, we will use both English and Spanish on the page to reach the majority of our mailing list. (If you are a volunteer leader and would like to be able to post on this blog, please contact us at volunteer@crmultilingue.org.)

Intensive English Sessions - July in San José

It's summer up North, a great time for camp, hobbies, and another fun things that aren't possible during the grind of the school year. Luckily for us, some intrepid student volunteers from Northeastern University (Boston) are going to spend part of the summer leading an English camp of their own - intensive conversation sessions - in downtown San José! We hope both new and experienced volunteers will drop by turn this month of sessions into an opportunity for Community Conversations' more permanent groups to make some progress as well. The Northeastern volunteers will be noting successful activities and ideas for addition to our Volunteer Handbook, and gathering information to help us launch new groups. So, experienced volunteers: will you drop by to share a favorite activity or suggestion with the participants, for inclusion in our Handbook? New volunteers: will you visit us so you can see how a conversation session works, and communicate with us about a schedule and location that would work for you for a weekly group? We hope to see you there! The sessions will take place at the IPEA English Center, across from Cine Variedades, from 9 to 11 am on the following dates: July 7 -8, 11-14, 18-22, 26-27. Please write to me (Katherine) at volunteer@crmultilingue.org if you would like to join us! Above: a photo from CRML-Northeastern's successful "English camp" in Desamparados in 2010.

Dear Abby...

In the latest Community Conversations Newsletter (didn't receive it? Please register!), we featured the Zapote conversation group that meets at the Food Court at Multiplaza del Este. As mentioned in the bulletin, their most recent topic was fashion - but volunteer Amanda Russell, at left in the black top, let slip another great activity they'd done in a previous session. The conversation group members turned themselves into Dear Abby-style agony columnists, responding to sticky situations - neighbor playing music too loud? in-law troubles? - with some sage advice. The activity is great for practicing "should" and "would," Amanda says. Thanks for this great suggestion! It also lends itself to reading activities before, during, or after the session, since volunteers could clip or print Dear Abby or similar columns from their favorite newspapers or magazines. Beginning English-language learners might benefit from bringing in or looking at an agony column from a Spanish-language newspaper as a reference beforehand, and then talking about the issues expressed there, in English. In short, it's an idea with lots of potential. Check out this Dear Abby archive to get started. Did you try this with your group? Write to us and let us know!