On March 6-10, Lake Zurich High School celebrated World Language Week—A school-wide event meant to acknowledge the importance of language and cultural diversity.

World Language Week is a national event organized by Alpha Mu Gamma every year. This year, LZHS followed the theme “Boost Your Brain with Language” with themed dress-up days, trivia competitions, language-related activities, and special morning announcements.

“My favorite thing we do [for World Language Week] is we get students who don’t speak English at home, one per day, to come on the announcements and tell the whole school something in their home language,” Elise Katter, Spanish teacher, said. “Then they repeat it in English so everyone knows what they said.”

Antje Perrin, German teacher, says that learning about other languages can help increase our tolerance and acceptance of different cultures.

According to Michelle “Elle” Feng, senior, knowing multiple languages is a valuable skill in our community, and learning about other languages strengthens important communication skills.
In order to celebrate the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity, World Language classes from high schools all over the country took part in various games and activities.

“Sometimes we have daily trivia contests within our classes. We also play language games to add to the spirit,” Perrin said. “I was at a different high school for 11 years and we always celebrated World Language Week with a bunch of different activities, so it’s truly a national [event].”

Outside of language classes, students participated in this event by competing in a school-wide trivia competition, in which students tested their knowledge on different cultures and languages.
In addition to trivia, there were also various themed dress-up days last week.

“Monday [was] souvenir T-shirts, which was just any shirt [students had] that was travel related, Tuesday [was] heritage colors, Wednesday [was] tacky tourist, Thursday [was] international sports, and Friday [was] global scholar, which is bear wear,” Katter said.

One of World Language Week’s objectives is to educate people on the importance of studying foreign languages. The vast majority of students at LZHS speak English as their first language, however there are still some students who speak other languages at home.

“Language is [such a big] part of who you are,” Katter said. “It’s the culture that you are from, that you practice, your family, your identity, it’s a big deal. So that’s why we made this year’s theme ‘Boost Your Brain with Language.’”