Humanities Program Spotlight:

Blue Jackets' Goalie Gives a Real-World Language Lesson

It was not your typical French class. In November, Columbus Blue Jackets' star goalie Pascal Leclaire chatted animatedly with Professor Wynne Wong's French 104.03 students in their Hagerty Hall classroom. The hockey star had been invited to speak French with students studying contemporary French society.

Leclaire, a native of Repentingy, Quebec, grew up in the French-speaking Canadian province. His visit allowed the class to get a personal perspective on the people, language, and culture of Quebec, one of the areas the class is studying. "This is a special opportunity for me," said Leclaire. "I was honored to be asked. I hope I have motivated the students to continue learning French and even visit Quebec," he added.

Leclaire's visit was part of the GOAL (Go Local, Go Global) program sponsored by the Foreign Language Center at Ohio State. "Through the GOAL program, we invite Columbus-area professionals and personalities who are non-native speakers of English to campus and have them talk with students in the foreign language classes," said Karen Sobul, coordinator for the program.

Wong, who also serves as director of French Basic Language Instruction, noted that the students visiting with Leclaire were in their fourth quarter of French which led to solid conversations. "Our whole approach is we teach grammar and vocabulary as tools only and not in isolation so the students can do real-world things with the language. GOAL is a perfect opportunity for them to do so. They find out information about a celebrity and they're using French to discover these things. It reinforces our teaching approach," she added.

Previous GOAL events have included best-selling Indian author Nilu Damle, who met with students learning Hindi; Junichi Hirokami, music director for the Columbus Symphony, who met with students of Japanese; and members of the Columbus Crew professional soccer team, Ivan Becerra, Marcos Gonzales and Jose Retiz, who met with students studying Spanish. The first ever GOAL event was with Rostislav Klesla, Leclaire's teammate on the Blue Jackets who conversed in his native language with students enrolled in Czech 101 and 104.