The Language Peer Mentor Program’s Spring Semester kicked off on February 20, pairing students together who want to improve verbal communication skills in their target languages. The program, one of the most popular extracurricular activities on campus, is seeing its highest enrollment this academic year, with 180 students signed up.
At the core of the program are the weekly hour-long meetings that peer mentors participate in with their partners, with the conversation alternating between Chinese and English each week. Students can choose their own topics, or rely on topics provided by the program, focused on useful vocabulary for real-world situations.
The program hosts four conversation salons throughout the semester, offering students an additional opportunity to practice their language skills in a judgement-free small group environment. In order to successfully complete the program, students must meet in their pairs for an hour each week for a total of ten weeks, attend at least one conversation salon, and, at the end of the semester, create video blogs wherein they speak their target language.
Study Away Programs Specialist Milly Yin, who founded the program in 2018, was inspired by her personal experiences as an international student studying in the United States where she participated in a similar program that helped her make friends. “We want to create a safe and private space for students to practice their language skills and also use it as an opportunity to make friends,” Yin said. “We’ve had students return four to five times; when you’re paired with different people, you’ll learn new things.”
For Ariel Jiang ’27, from Shanghai, and Coco Wu ’28, from Austin, Texas, the program has been a safe space to practice their language skills while also learning about each other’s cultural backgrounds. “I feel less burden asking my language peer mentor language questions compared to my roommate because we have a dedicated space for it,” Jiang said. “I feel like I learned a lot about Coco’s cultural background; it’s what I remember most from our conversations.”
“Our conversations gave me a glimpse into different perspectives and experiences, and it provided a better understanding and stronger foundation for learning the language, ” Wu added. They became friends, bonding over their shared love of cats, bubble tea, and blind boxes (盲盒).
New friendships is one of the added benefits of joining the program, say the participants. “At the beginning, I just expected to practice English and get in touch with others," said Gao Yining ’28, from Chengdu. “I didn't expect that I could make such a good friend.” Gao and her language peer mentor Catherine Ward NYU ’25, from Kansas City, Missouri, even took a trip to Beijing together over the Thanksgiving holiday. Ward said their friendship has been an important part of her study away experience in Shanghai. “Yining and I spent almost every Wednesday night walking around the parks and streets of Shanghai; we enjoyed exploring the city while conversing in both English and Chinese,” she said.
Kiera Liu ’27, from Beijing, and Steven Chen ’27, from New York, both felt their language skills were quite strong, so they took the program as a unique opportunity to introduce each other to internet memes from their respective cultures. “We decided to learn slang together to communicate with other students in the NYU community,” Chen said. The pair combed through Chinese memes together and would also text one another so that Liu could learn common English abbreviations.
The Language Peer Mentor program offers community members a structured way to get to know each other outside of the classroom, providing a unique opportunity for students to expand both their social circles and language capabilities. Yin says she hopes that the program continues to grow in the future.