Lauren Klein,
a UNC Charlotte student, Department of Languages and Culture
Studies, has been
chosen as a winner of the United Nations Academic Impact “Many Languages, One
World” contest.
From among 1,500
contests, 60 students were chosen to represent each of the six official
languages of the United Nations—Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and
Spanish. Together with the other contest
winners, Klein will travel to New York to participate in a four-day Global
Youth Forum and present her work to the United Nations.
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| Lauren Klein |
Lauren,
who has just completed her fourth semester of Russian language, was selected as
one of 10 representatives of Russian.
In order to be selected, she had to first demonstrate written
proficiency in Russian in the form of a 1,000 word essay and then demonstrate
spoken proficiency by undergoing an oral interview in Russian. In her essay, Lauren addresses the question
of the relationship of multilingualism to global citizenship by drawing on her
family’s history and her own personal experiences with
languages learning.
Compelled by a love
of Russian literature, particularly the works of Vladimir Nabokov, whom she
quotes in her essay, Klein began to study Russian independently at the age of
16. To her dismay, however, she
encountered adverse attitudes towards Russian in her family, which stemmed from
events of the past. Unbeknownst to her
until recently, Lauren’s maternal great-grandparents fled the Russian Empire
for Canada as Jewish refugees at the beginning of the 20th century. Yet these harrowing circumstances only amplified
the importance of Russian for Klein.
In
her view, studying another language increases humanity, respect, and
understanding between people of different cultural backgrounds. The United Nations contest has been a great
opportunity for Klein to connect with native speakers of Russian, from her UNC Charlotte professor Yuliya Baldwin, who worked closely with Klein
throughout the process, to other teachers and students in the United States and in Russia
who generously helped her improve her Russian language skills.
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