UNNC Global Fair: Spain Representative

While doing my research in Spain about the UNNC (The University of Nottingham Ningbo China) and the opportunities it offers, I found videos in which one would see flags filling the streets around campus. Why? Because of the Global Fair (check out all represented countries in 2023 here).

Vis-à-Vis, GoUK!, and the Global Fair

Vis-à-Vis, which we also refer to as VAV, is a student-led organization at the UNNC whose main focus is enriching students’ lives on campus through activities, games, cultural events, opportunities to meet new people and form new friend groups, learn and put into practise English, and so much more. One of the programmes in VAV is called GoUK!, a team that focuses on promoting cultural exchange with the help of other students. One way we achieve so is through the Global Fair. Let’s read more about it, shall we?

The Global Fair: what is it?

The Global Fair at the UNNC is one of the events organised by GoUK! from VAV in which different students undertake the role of country representatives. International students, like me, usually volunteer to represent their homeland and, with the help of other mainland volunteers, each country representative structures their own booth around a theme, like gastronomy, games, culture, quizzes, etc. A reward system encourages participation, with mementoes and tokens for credits being distributed to participants.

“I’ll do Spain!” - The plan behind Spain’s booth

As I mentioned at the beginning, I found about this activity long before arriving on campus (much longer before starting the application for going abroad!), and I really was looking forward to volunteering for it. Thus, when the forms opened, I had the opportunity to show the GoUK! members the ideas I had for Spain’s booth.

My main motivation with the booth for Spain was making sure that people left it knowing something new and with a bit of confidence if they ever determine themselves to learn Spanish. Thus, I decided to build Spain’s booth upon two (yes, you read that well, two) main themes: language learning and culture. I have read about (and experienced first-hand as a videogame enjoyer) the positive impact games in any format have in the learning process, so I thought that a memory game using flashcards (a wonderful resource for language learning) in which the vocabulary revolved around Spanish culture would be ideal.

After discussing with my volunteer, Tim, about the main plan, I got started with preparing the material. While topics like common animals, colours, and numbers are a staple, I wanted to touch upon specific cultural aspects. After randomly finding an article talking about the stabilisation of the Iberian Lynx in the Iberian peninsula (where, for the fellow readers, is where Spain and Portugal are located), I was struck with the idea of including specific animals from Spain or meaningful to our culture. After I got into the mindset of finding the topics, I eventually wrote a vocabulary list with 9 categories: Numbers, Colours, Common Animals, Animals from Spain, Expressions for a Basic Introduction, Idioms, Typical Food, Christmas, and Cities.

My volunteer and I browsed for the material and souvenirs to give out to students that would participate in our booth, made a budget, and we were ready to go! The only thing left was receiving the products and waiting for the final day.

The day of the event - “A pasarlo guay”

I arrived early to the lawn in front of PB (the teaching building with the Starbucks), and my volunteer and I began to prepare the booth. With the décor, material, and souvenirs on deck, we were ready to welcome people.

To be honest, good grief, was our booth successful.

A glimpse of evidence, your Honour

Tim and I were speaking constantly for the whole duration of the event. There were layers and layers of people in front of our booth queuing up for their turn in the game. Whilst one may think that people were there for the souvenirs or the credit-tokens only, students AND staff were still queuing up in layers even after running out of everything. They were having a lovely time at our booth! Now, how did the two of us manage to have an engaging booth?

My friends were so nice for taking pictures at the event. Since after each round of the game there was another group of people that wanted to try, we had almost no time to rest!

Since having one-on-one teaching would have not been feasible (specially after seeing how many people came to our booth), we decided to make rounds of the game with the people that were in front of the table at that moment. We would quickly organise a votation for the topics to learn (2 or 3 depending on the amount of words in them), have a quick round of the vocabulary in which we would pronounce together, and finally do a memory game for the flashcards (note that remembering pronunciation is a fantastic effort, already!). Then, we would grant them their award. Together with the vocabulary they were learning, I would introduce culture from Spain. For example, let’s say we were discussing animals from Spain and the next card was “Lince Ibérico” (Iberian Lynx). We would display pictures of the lynx and talk about the animal and its significance in Spain. We followed this method with the different terms, and thus people learnt about “Chocolate con Churros” (hot chocolate with churros), “los 3 Reyes Magos” (the Three Wise Men), “el tiempo es oro” (time is money)…

Tim and I at the booth

We really enjoyed the discussions that would arise from the explanations of the vocabulary, the students were genuinely curious about the culture and, for many of them, it was their first exposure to Spanish culture at all or beyond the most popular bits of culture. I am glad that we helped them discover a bit more about some place so far away from where they live.

Some quick final words

It makes me feel warm inside to see that I have become one of the people that appeared in those videos I watched long before arriving on campus. Thank you, Tim, for helping me with the booth, and for the UNNC and VAV for entrusting me with this opportunity!!! I cannot wait to represent Spain again in the future in similar activities.

Regards,
Saúl