A few short days after finishing finals, I was off to Montréal to participate in the Université de Québec à Montréal’s four-week Business French Immersion program. The program involved daily morning classes where we talked about a wide-range of topics in business, worked on vocabulary, and learned advanced level grammar. In the afternoons, we visited different Montréal-based businesses. The highlight of the program was our work on conversation, with assignments that included developing and administering a survey to strangers on campus and producing a news program with Radio Canada.
During the program, I had the oppocrtunity to spend four weeks in Montréal and experienced firsthand Montréal’s rich cultural offerings. From nightly forays into the yearly Francofolies music festival, which highlighted Francophone music the world over, to celebrating the “Fête Nationale” in the rain at Parc Maisonneuve, I relished the opportunity to explore Québécois culture.
My summer FLAS allowed me the opportunity to learn more about Québec culture and to develop my conversational abilities with other advanced speakers. I am grateful to the Canadian Studies Center for this opportunity as the experience has both strengthened my interest in working on cross-border legal issues and laid a firm foundation for my continuing studies in advanced French.
Tony’s research regards the legal issues facing the Inuit of Nunavik, Québec’s Arctic policy, and Canadian Arctic policy more broadly. Tony studied French at the Université de Québec à Montréal and at the Seattle Languages International during the summer and academic year.
Funding for FLAS Fellowships is provided by a Center allocation from International and Foreign Language Education, U.S. Department of Education. Visit our FLAS page: http://jsis.washington.edu/canada/flas/
