The Language Voluntariate (VL) is a programme for welcoming and taking in UPF foreign students. It has the two-fold aim of promoting the linguistic and cultural integration of foreign students and the internationalisation of Catalan students. Each academic year the Language Voluntariate develops a programme of social and cultural boosting (offering a wide range of social and cultural activities to show the diverse strands of Catalan reality, with trips, visits and various activities around Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia), and a programme of linguistic boosting (which consists of creating and managing each term a forum for language exchange between foreign and Catalan students.

In addition to the activities developed within the afore-mentioned programmes, during the 2005-2006 academic year the Language Voluntariate has begun to renew, extend, update and redesign its website, now featuring a direct URL (www.upf.edu/vl), in order to make access to it easier and to encourage its habitual consultation by linguistic volunteers and exchange students alike. Thus, the Language Voluntariate website has been redesigned so everybody can easily understand how the different activities work and how to register for the conversation exchange programme, for which an online enrolment form has been implemented. At the same time, a new semi computerised system has been created for the matching of language tandems on the basis of parameters like the chosen linguistic options, the degree or the age of the applicants, among others.

On the other hand, and thanks to the collaboration of all VL members who are taking part in the activities carried out throughout the year, the gallery of photographs of the VL website has been updated and enriched regularly, and shows the pictures that students taking part in the activities send us by e-mail.

Social and cultural boosting programme

Throughout the year, the Language Voluntariate offers to the group of foreign students staying at UPF -regardless of them being undergraduate or postgraduate students- a wide range of social and cultural activities aimed at introducing them to the varied aspects of Catalan reality: getting them to know the people, the country, the customs and traditions, the culture, the history, the cuisine, etc. These activities are also aimed at Catalan language volunteers -there are almost five hundred of them at the moment-  so personal, linguistic and cultural exchanges in both directions are possible. 

This year the Language Voluntariate has continued counting on the ideas and the special cooperation of the Motivated group of students, who is formed by some thirty Catalan students who, with more or less perseverance and involvement, invest part of their time in participating in and providing ideas to the programme.

This initiative fortifies the links between the Catalan members of the Language Voluntariate, and it allows it to count on a more or less stable and active group that takes part in many of the activities and, therefore, strengthens the programme and makes it livelier. 

Within this great block of activities, during the 2005-2006 academic year a great number of organised activities has been offered, a total of twelve per trimester, including the information about and the attendance to local celebrations of Barcelona and Catalonia, like the Mercè or Sant Jordi festivities, and with the novelty, this year, of night festive routes around different districts in Barcelona, which have been led by “motivated” students and who have showed to all the students the premises and the more emblematic areas of night leisure in each district. The following guided activities and visits have been organised: in the city of Barcelona, three Tapas tours around Ciutat Vella; three guided visits to the Parliament of Catalonia; three editions of the weekly meeting point, in the three first weeks of every term; two guided visits around the Raval district; a tour around historical corners in the Gothic Quarter; two visits to the Museum and the sports facilities of the Barcelona Football Club; a Motivated Christmas-term dinner; two night festive routes around the Raval and Sant Gervasi districts; the attendance to the Sant Medir festivity, to the Majorcan celebration of the Foguerons, to the celebrations of Santa Eulàlia and to the opening of the film Rock & Cat, and the annual end-of-the-year Language Voluntariate dinner. As far as the rest of Catalonia is concerned, the following guided visits have been offered: city and monastery of Ripoll, historical and monumental Girona (on the occasion of the Sant Narcís fair), modernist and Gaudi's Reus, Sitges (on the occasion of the Carnival celebration), historical and Roman Tarragona, Figueres and the Dalí Museum, city and market of Vic, Montserrat, Núria Valley, as well as a bicycle guided excursion through the "green way" linking Ripoll and Sant Joan de les Abadesses, a ski weekend in the resort of Soldeu-El Tarter (Andorra), one in the Aigüestortes National Park and two weekends in a cottage in the north of the Osona region, in central Catalonia.

Programme of linguistic boosting

In September of this academic year the Language Voluntariate offered a twenty-hour intensive course of introduction to Catalan language, culture and society, aimed at all exchange students. The course, that took place during the two weeks previous to the beginning of the classes of the new academic year, was attended by 140 students, in two separate groups. In January the Language Voluntariate offered a six-hour session of introduction to the Catalan culture and society during the first week of the term, which was attended by a total of 60 exchange students.

During the second term the efforts have been focussed in arranging and boosting the conversation exchange programme between Catalan and exchange students, with the two-fold purpose of facilitating linguistic and cultural integration of exchange students, on the one hand, and linguistic and cultural internationalisation of Catalan students, on the other hand. Although preference is given to language tandems wishing to learn and offering Catalan as a first option, a Catalan-speaking tandem is also offered to those foreign students wishing to learn Spanish as a first option, since, apart from allowing the internationalisation of Catalan students, it has also been established that in many cases this initial exchange through the Spanish language later leads many foreign students to learn Catalan with its same linguistic partner with whom they had exchanged Spanish initially. Nevertheless, unlike other conversation exchange university programmes, in the case of UPF academic credits are not obtained, and therefore students take part in it only for the sake of exchanging languages. Altogether, during the 2005-2006 academic year 380 language tandems  in the first term, 106 in the second and 121 in the third have been matched for exchanging Catalan and/or Spanish for up to twenty of different languages.