by Niall Shannon

English Conversation Partners, which organizes events for international and ESL students to improve their English skills, is returning to in-person meetings for the first time since March 2020.

ECP’s first in-person meeting since the start of the coronavirus pandemic took place in H.J. Patterson Hall on Nov. 15 as a celebration of International Education Week. Students gathered around tables in the H.J. Patterson Hall atrium, drinking coffee and chatting. 

Cameron Busacca, program’s coordinator, said the event is both a celebration of what the program has endured and what is yet to come. 

During the early days of the pandemic, ECP facilitators had to adapt to using online tools to run the conversation groups. 

“For the groups, it was a willingness to just start meeting online,” Busacca said. 

The online meetings had some clear benefits, Busacca said, because facilitators were able to use online tools like screen sharing articles to supplement conversation.

“I think that was a really cool aspect, that multimedia became much more part of the conversation,” he said.

Meeting online allowed students to keep their sense of community during the pandemic, said Barathi Aravindan, a senior finance and psychology double major. 

Some international students never had the chance to visit the university, which made meeting other students difficult. 

“Having ECP was really great for that,” Aravindan said.

For some facilitators, the move to virtual meetings presented a challenge. 

“Looking at such a small image, you can’t see facial features as well, you can’t see body language,” said Rex Butler, who has worked with the program for 20 years. 

“You get a better sense of people when you can be with them face to face,” he said. 

Virtual meetings are better than nothing, but are not the best way forward for developing conversational language, Butler said.

The program is not going back to exactly how it functioned before the pandemic, Busacca said. Before the pandemic, ECP only contacted students after they came to the U.S., but with virtual meetings that changed. 

“Wherever people were, they were just joining in, and that has continued to be the case. Even now, in some of the groups there are people that are all over the world,” he said.

ECP is looking to continue virtual summer sessions in the future, and hope that the increased flexibility will attract more facilitators. 

“Without the semester structure of fall and spring, people will be everywhere. I don’t see why an alumni who moves away shouldn’t be able to be a facilitator,” Busacca said.

Featured image: A graphic advertises the English Conversation Partners group. Photo courtesy of the Office of International Affairs.