By: Jen Anderson

The French House at UW-Madison might be unique in many ways, but French is not the only language department reaching out to students. The International Learning Community, a sector of UW Housing, assists with language education outside of the classroom across a variety of different languages. ILC aims to bridge culture between students at UW Madison by “living and learning in an international community.”

At ILC in Adams Hall, there are nine separate clusters of rooms, or houses as they call them, for Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German, Chinese and Nordic languages.

“[The Department of German] used to have a German House. We are now participating in the ILC … I believe we were the first language there,” said Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor, Department Chair for the Department of German.

Taylor said that the lack of a German House does not cut down on the immense outreach surrounding the German language and culture at UW-Madison. These smaller communities allow for other languages at UW-Madison to encourage discussion and learning outside of the classroom despite not having a physical house of the same scale as the French House.