Recently we interviewed Anthoy, the president of our wonderful Language society, to find out what it’s like being part of a society and how it can impact your university life.
Can you give a brief overview of your society and what's it’s been doing so far this year?
We are the UWS Languages Society and we're a space for people who want to practice and learn languages at the university. If anyone's interested in a language that’s quite popular, like French or English, they can come and practice with us what they have been learning recently, just to get that confidence of speaking and in a space where you don't feel rushed or judged for your speaking ability.
This is also for if you're speaking a niche language, or one that doesn't have many speakers, like Gallic. We provide a space with free food, free snacks and we also help organise everything in the room. just turn up and share with us and make friends with everyone else. It's been interesting as I personally didn't think that there would be many people interested in learning languages. I was learning French and I was really good at reading and writing it, but I couldn't speak it because I never got the opportunity to speak with someone who listen, who will not judge me for my French accent and who also gives me the time to allow my brain to process. Being that I'm learning a language, it takes my brain a lot longer to process a simple sentence like I love you, and other phrases like that. With this I realised I needed to create a space so people can come and not feel judged with the same opportunities as everyone else. Most of the times when you're learning a new language, you don't have the funding or the finances or the opportunity and the time to go to a country that speaks that language in a formal way in the daily life. often what I try to do is to try and immerse myself in the cultural aspects as much as I can without going to the country, maybe music, films, TV. But that does not replace the exchange of speaking to another person, listening to them, at least looking at their reactions and being able to express yourself in a way communicating. you can't get that from watching a TV show.
What has been the main success of your society so far?
We were able to get at least I think two members.
So that was a big success. coming into the first and the second semester, we attended the fairs and got a lot of support from the student union with preparing materials, printing, staff help and promotion. we were there talking to people, encouraging them to come to our meetings. We hold weekly meetings every Thursday 4:00 to 5:00 and we also hold a monthly special occasion. this is when we go out, maybe to watch a movie or go to a cultural exchange event or we might have like a game’s night and it’s all around maybe language themed or cultural themed. And we do get a lot of international students. There's a lot of cultural exchange. You get people from India; you get people from Greece and lots of other countries. we really, really have a very diverse cohort of members who come to us.
I think what's good about us is we don't, at least we try to not encourage commitment because learning a language is always already hard. if a member can't come because they're busy with anything, you know, work, care, responsibilities, you know, we'll just say if you can't come over, we’ll still be here. We’re always here. So that's really I think what I like about our society and we encourage people to express themselves. when we start, we'll always start with like a welcome activity and then we ask people if they've encountered any language in their daily life or maybe they found a colleague that speaks the language they're trying to learn or they themselves have been trying to learn something and they found someone else's who's trying to learn something and they had the little moment of sharing. I think some of our members were learning Russian and they found someone who's Russian speaking in the society.
What has been the biggest challenge that the society has faced so far?
Since we started in September 2025, we’ve struggled a lot to get going with booking rooms and organising our events. One time we were locked out of the building. It's been tough to get going at the same time balancing our academics because we are also students. it's difficult to kind of manage your time to prepare for the society. people arrive in the spaces when they are all set up, and they just enjoy the atmosphere, whereas for us we have to walk out in the background, book rooms, get snacks, create materials, get creative, think about how to engage people. And that's really been our first challenge in the first semester.
I think some of the challenges we have is really running the day-to-day like even week to week activities for the society, creating promotional content and media for the society. maybe even looking at how particular things are done, say for example the feedback after the event, seeing how the event went and what people would like for us to do for them.
That's been a challenge for us to do because As for now we're very, you know, we're still kind of like setting the format. people feel as if it's they can't do anything, but it’s actually the opposite. We know we're trying to encourage more people to do as much as they can within and outside the society. Even if like you just want to post like a feedback loop for the society then or help pick up the snacks, the littlest of things because we're all volunteering together. So, I think looking forward, we're trying to get more members engaged with the society and help run the community, so it doesn't look like we are the only ones who are allowed to.
What kind of impact has this had on your university experience
We are pressed for time because we have really strenuous study workloads all at the same time within the society. Some of us want to spend longer time in the cafe. at the same time there are others who just want to be in and out, you know, maybe 5 minutes. it's like balancing the needs of every member. people want to spend more time talking or less time talking. Some people just want someone to quiz them about a thing they learned. Personally, I just want to tell A story, you know, I don't want to be quizzed about grammar and vocabulary. Yeah, so that is the balancing aspect. We try to bring harmony into the event every time we meet.
What could the students union do to help better support the society
In terms of like how we could get more from the student union, I don't know, maybe more promotional help like could be putting some of our events on the on the display boards in the uni and that could be helpful.
I've learned it for the you could you could actually also e-mail the accommodation team and have them display your promotional content on the displays. So I would look to do that next time.
And also um.
We look we are trying to have our like movie night in a in a month's time. So that would be our one of our special occasions. the funding might be tight on that because you we may want to get more snacks than we normally get so.
Maybe we need to get in touch with your end to see how we can help. Other than that, is I have this vision of organizing, you know, days out, obviously not yet because we're still kind of like settling into the routines and stuff we need to do. So maybe fundraising with the union or seeing our percentage of the funds they could help us with towards the costs of the experience.
Do you have any other comments you would like to share or any upcoming plans for the society?
For the future of the society, I want more people to step up because as you can imagine, I'm leaving very soon in a year or so and I don't want the society to die with me. I think I’ll look to maybe get some new members, especially first years. I've been looking at our analytics like most of our members are actually in in third year and second year. So it's really not the best in terms of having the society be multi-generational.
So maybe engaging more of the first years, I'm seeing if they're if they're keen to get, you know, get stuck in, get involved. It's not always the easy thing for a language society to spread. It's not very social, you know.
as you can imagine, most of the overly loud culture about the university is, you know, going out, drinking and getting smashed. And we’re really not about that. it's kind of tricky to get people, but I'm sure we can find something really engaging on social media to attract more people. We've done quite a lot. When we began, we didn't have a format. Right now, we have a template of something we can play around with. Something we can expand when people are more free and keen to get stuck into like a two-hour event. On the other hand, if it is assessment season and people may want to get stuck into their studies and less so the societies, so we could offer half an hour sessions instead. We'll be looking at ideas like that in the future. That's what we've been doing, you know, getting into the routine of like, when to get the snacks, when to get the promotional content out, when to get the media out. We even have an Instagram page now so that’s a great improvement for us. I'm happy to say I didn’t have to do that myself. One of our members really helped us set that up so I'm really happy towards the end. We have gone from 2 people to 25. I’m really, really, really happy!
Why should new students join your society?
If you want to enhance your love for language or are looking for a space to practice speaking or if you have in mind that you want to be able to flex on people by speaking multiple languages, this is just your space to come. It’s a space where you won’t be judged for your accent and you can improve your English or any other language. This is the space for you to come out of your shell and feel like you belong at university and make friends with common interests!
A huge thank you to Anthony for giving us an amazing insight into the goings on within the UWS Language Society!
If you fancy joining the Language society, you can sign up here: UWS Languages Society
You can also check out a list of all our wonderful societies here: https://www.uwsunion.org.uk/societies/societies/
