Anthropology class met with international students to learn

Southeast Missouri State University’s professor Dr. Warren Anderson of the Anthropology Department, held a meeting for anthropology and international students on Thursday, Oct. 27, in the University Center Indian room.

Anderson grouped students from his course “Intro into Linguistic Anthropology” along with international students of the Intensive English Program.

Anderson said he has been teaching the course for the last 14 to 16 years, but that it is only offered every other fall semester.

“As a teacher, I am very interested in experiential learning. I believe in learning about things and then trying them,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he believes that through their structured exercises, his students are “thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool,” gaining hands-on experience.

The hour-long meeting primarily focused on gathering all the students into small groups each based on one of five specific languages. This gives American students an opportunity to learn a foreign language from an actual native speaker versus a textbook.

The group is comprised of 38 IEP and 26 undergraduate students. The five main languages offered in this year’s course are Arabic, Tibetan, Mandarin, Japanese and French.

“The IEP students are being assigned a task that they must accomplish with American students, and that’s a very different kind of learning experience,” Anderson said.

For the vast majority of the international students involved, English is their second or third language, and the program allows them to get assistance in bettering their English in turn for educating others about their native tongue.

Anderson said his next course will begin in the fall of 2018.