The Language Voluntariate of Pompeu Fabra University is a welcome and support programme aimed at international students who are studying at UPF by means of an exchange programme with their home universities. At the same time it is also intended at promoting the internationalization of local students. Its programme revolves around on one hand, the leisure and cultural programme around Barcelona and Catalonia; and, on the other hand, the language exchange programme -which is mainly based on each term's allocation of language partners as well as offering an introductory seminar to the Catalan language, culture and society. Thanks to the financial support of the Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya and the UPF International Relations Unit, many of thsose above-mentioned activities can be offered at minimal or non-existent cost.

Leisure and cultural programme

During this academic year, the Language Voluntariate offers to the foreign students community - no matter if they are undergraduates or posgraduates- a wide range of leisure and cultural activities in order to show them very many different aspects of the Catalan reality - getting to know its people, its land, the traditions, the local gastronomy,...At the same time, thos activities are also addressed to thos Catalans who are already members of the LV - about five hundred members so far- in order to boost personal, linguistic and cultural exchanges in both ways.

This year the Lanaguage Voluntariate has consolidated its so-called Motivated students group - which was created last year and which consists of those Catalan students more or less involved with the Lv  on a regular basis who allocate part of their time to help us promote run the programme and who've become the organisers of most of the LV ran activities. This group is currently made up of around 30 students that regularly meet to talk about the activities that have taken place and discuss prospective, new ones; and to strengthen the bonds between Catalan students of the Language Voluntariate. This way we have managed to make our activities more appealing to Catalan students- and we've specially ensured that the programme won autonomy and was open to a more and more enthusiastic and numerous group of students. Furthermore, thanks to the ccoperation of all the members of the LV, we have started a gallery of pictures on the LV's website this year that is updated now and then and where you can see the pics taken by the people who took part in the LV activities themselves. Those pics were sent to us by email.

Linguistic boost programme  

This year, the LV has offered a free of charge course on Catalan language, culture and society for exchange students joining UPF. This termwith 20 hours' lenght took place surinf the first two weeks of each academic term. Regarding the number of participants, about a hundred took part in it in the September edition, about 60 people attended the one in January and 30 people -roughly- took part in the one taking place in April. The course's goal is to offer knowledge on the Catalan language, culture and society so as to ensure those students can grasp the linguistic and social reality of Cataloniaand they ar provided with the tools that will help them to go deeper in Catalan learming and to make their academic stay in Catalonia easier.

On the other hand, we've carried on managing and boosting the language exchange programme between exchange and local students with the doble aim of helping foreign students to become linguistically and socially integrated in Catalonia, and to internationalize local students. Though it is true that we give priority to thos language partners who whish to learn or teach Catalan, we also allocate Catalan speakers as a language partner to thos who request Spanish as their first language choice since experience has shown that this encourages international students to learn Catalan with that same language partner later on. In contrast to other universities' language exchange programmes, UPF does not provide ECTS credits for taking part in the LV language exchange programme. Therefore, those who participate are truly motivated to meet the specific aims of the programme.

In order to match this year's language partners we ask the two groups involed which languages they offer and request, and then -after having met the offer with demand-, we celebrate a formal meeting where all language partners are introduced to each other and then we explain how the language exchange programme should work, as well as providing them with the guidelines given by the LV. In total,we have matched 340 language partners during this year (150 in the first term, 103 in the second term and 87 in the third one, those numbers being proportional to the number of students who joined UPF each term), that as previously stated exchanged Catalan and/or Spanish for the main European languages.