The English Conversation Circles address immigrants’ needs in learning English which helps them assimilate, communicate, obtain employment and fully engage in their community. The program leverages the assistance of trained volunteers to provide weekly classes not only on language acquisition, but also help immigrants to understand and demystify American culture. For the other foreign language conversation circles, participants learn and practice with native speakers/volunteers and with each other to improve their speaking abilities.

Through an IMLS grant, the English Conversation Circles were started at multiple branches in 2003 and later expanded to several school locations. In recent years, based on patrons’ requests, conversation circles in Spanish, French and Chinese were added. Trained native-speaking volunteers facilitate all the programs. Its success and longevity are due to our dedicated volunteers and fulfilling the needs using fun and flexible curriculum such as role play, shopping trips and audio visual learning.

Language improvement helps our participants gain self confidence, cultural awareness, employment, daily communication and fuller participation in the community. Our circles often provide a social network for the lonely and many friendships have been made among participants and volunteers. Our Conversation Circles volunteers report high satisfaction for their contribution and stay on for a long time. Thousand of community members have enjoyed the opportunities interact and learn to speak a language through the library’s efforts.