Celebrating Multilingualism at ISKL

High School student Mei Y. found a fantastic way to utilize language as a powerful tool to help other students. After meeting with nurses and EAL teachers at ISKL, Mei, who is an EAL student, became well-versed in pain charts and was able to create Japanese, Korean, and Chinese medical translation posters for the nurse clinic. This helps other EAL students feel comfortable expressing their needs in their mother tongue.

The Latin Women’s Association of Malaysia launched a fabulous cookbook, Makan Latino, to share their members' best recipes, from traditional dishes from their home countries to international dishes from all over the globe.

To share the gift of teaching others about delicious international delicacies, ISKL students helped translate the book to share with the Malaysian community, giving them an authentic experience in utilizing their Spanish! All proceeds raised from book sales go towards supporting the education of 180 refugee children at Fugee School in Kuala Lumpur. With their help and skills, Makan Latino, found its way into the kitchens of many.

Our High School students in the Spanish Language and Arts class wrote for an “Aló Aló" issue by the Latin American Women Association by contributing articles written and translated from Spanish to English entirely by themselves! They were free to pick the topic of their article and chose to write about a broad range of topics.

The collaboration presented students, both native and non-native speakers, with various advantages: the development of journalistic writing skills, the linking with the Latin community in KL, and the awareness of the strong potential that the Spanish language presents in other contexts besides the domestic and academics.

The language barrier can be one of the hardest things to overcome when moving to a new country—but with so many people speaking so many languages at ISKL, it creates the best environment to learn!

Vincent Cee, ISKL HS Music teacher, shares his experience learning Bahasa Melayu: “It is a beautiful language, and I am curious to see if I can eventually read and write poetry and make funny jokes. I’m thankful for how supportive everybody has been to teach me a word or two a day and for how people are willing to listen to my strange accent.”

ISKL’s world-class educators come from around the globe to share knowledge with our students. Our language department is no exception, bringing their expertise in languages and a diversity in culture to share with our community. Check out some of the features we have done on our language department teachers in Panthers of ISKL to discover their stories!

• Leandro Venier

• Ivy Qian 

• Emilia Giraldo 

As the dynamic and international-minded community, ISKL parents decided to push the concept of conversational English classes to intercultural exchange with the English/Mandarin Cultural Exchange program, which included hiking, cooking, a tea ceremony, and much more.

Every year on February 21, International Mother Tongue Day (IMTD) is observed with the goal of fostering global linguistic and cultural diversity. Parents and teachers recorded stories in languages other than English to honor IMTD.

The event was well-received and appreciated by all. We had stories told in Thai, Czech, Hindi, Italian, Urdu, Chinese, Danish, Korean, Turkish, Japanese, Malay, Tamil, Dutch, and French!