Awesome people occasionally reach out to ask me about the US State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program. I participated in CLS Korean in 2016, and I still find myself learning from the experiences I had in Gwangju all those years ago (and that’s with four additional years of living in Korea and several visits in between).

This year’s CLS cohort is getting started now or so, so I thought I would write up a couple of tips for making the most of the program that I’ve collected and shared over the years.

  1. Contribute ideas for activities to do with your language partner, because they may run out of them before long. Your outsider perspective might generate interesting adventures like visiting a family with young kids or sneaking into a college lecture.
  2. Embrace a Zen attitude with respect to the language policy. Understand that some cohort members may need space to process new experiences and cultural differences in English; this doesn’t mean they are not getting the most of the program. Language acquisition doesn’t have to be your only goal. (Context: CLS is famously an immersion-based program and requires participants to sign a language pledge saying that they won’t use English for the duration or the program. In retrospect, I was too much of a stickler about it.)
  3. Identify and recognize your own stress responses and consider how they may contribute to or ameliorate the stress experienced by others. This is especially true for “elder” CLS participants (grad students and up), whom younger participants tend to see as role models in adapting to unforeseen challenges.
  4. Buy an umbrella in Korea and thank me later.

And please email me if you are on CLS this year and have any stories to share! I still have a few posts around from my CLS days, but nothing profound.