NOTE: This is the latest in a series of question and answer stories featuring faculty members who are integrating the 2021 Canada Games into the courses they teach at Brock University or the research they’re leading. For more information on Brock’s academic activities around the Games, visit brocku.ca/canada-games

Brock University Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures Jean Ntakirutimana is eager about the opportunities the Canada Summer Games will bring to his students, such as practicing some of the theories learned in the classroom and gaining hands-on experience in various organizational fields.

Ntakirutimana, who has been teaching linguistics for more than three decades, is integrating the Games in his upcoming Documentation and Terminology course.

What is your Canada Games-related course title, code and description?

FREN 4V21: Documentation and Terminology

This fourth-year French course is aimed to helping students master techniques of searching and retrieving technical terms through printed and digital documents; assess the meaning of these terms, their validity and accuracy in a network of semantically related terms; appropriately use technical terms in translation; and archive technical terms in terminological databases for future translations, and for eventually sharing these archives with partners in the language industry.

Describe how you’ve integrated Canada Games related material into your course.

Through FREN 4V21, I intend to assist and guide students towards a better grasping of sports terminology, more particularly special vocabulary used when talking about the Canada Games.

This includes technical terms related to infrastructures and organization, sports equipment, athletes, coaches and other professionals who interact with athletes, facilities where sports are practised and played, hierarchies and relationships between individuals involved in the Games.

The course will focus on sports technical terms in the two official languages of the Games, namely English and French, thus preparing FREN 4V21 students to actively partake in Games-language-related tasks such as broadcasting bilingual announcements, acting as bilingual guides and assisting in translation of some official documents. Students enrolled in FREN 4V21 will be strongly encouraged to apply for volunteer and paid Canada Games jobs.

Why do you think Canada Games presents such a good opportunity for students at Brock?

Canada Games 2021 will be a good opportunity for our students to translate into practice some of the theories they acquire in the classroom, gaining hands-on professional experience in various organizational fields and hopefully more experience in their specialties. It will also be another way of giving back to the community while showcasing the multiple young talents in our institution.

Since the announcement of the Canada Games to be hosted by the Niagara Region, members of the French Studies program have been sensed as important partners in the planning and running of the Games. It has been emphasized very often that our students will be asked to play key roles as francophone voices and faces. Several requests for bilingual volunteers have already been announced by the Canada Games headquarters; also, it has been stated that the Brock University Volunteer Association (BUVA) will have a special focus on the recruitment of French-speaking volunteers

Do you have any suggestions for ways your colleagues can use the Games as a way to enhance teaching and learning opportunities in their courses?

Any teaching gets an added value when theory gets to be applied to reality, more interesting when the reality is unfolding locally and close to home, and more particularly when all this happens in your front yard (on campus).

I envision the 2021 Canada Games as a golden opportunity to include more experiential learning components in-course that are often perceived as too theoretical and not enough practical.

The French Studies program has several courses prone to be Canada Games‑centered, thanks to the academic freedom of each individual instructor, combined with creativity.

FREN 4V21 has a natural connection with several courses in our program, more particularly with translation courses and few other courses with significant communicative components. Some colleagues teaching advanced French courses on translation, oral communication and special topics have expressed genuine interest in introducing Games‑centered topics in a couple of their courses.

Once the Games are finished, how do you plan to continue using this new idea in your course?

This new course will continue to be offered on a regular basis as a logical complement to the existing translation courses within the French Studies program, more particularly in the newly approved Certificate in Business French and Translation.

FREN 4V21 requires the prerequisite(s) FREN 3P03 and 3P06 or permission from the instructor.

For more information about the course, visit the French Studies website or e-mail Ntakirutimana at jntakirutimana@brocku.ca