For those of you who don’t want to read my whole text heres the TLDR:

• The Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Learning Center is a hub that offers help for language learning students.
• They have a ‘multimedia center’s essentially a room with a bunch of computers where you can access some language learning website
  • Most of these websites can easily be found with quick Google searches from home
• Some movies in your target language are available to be watched in the multimedia room. Although they seemed a bit old and I was skeptical of the quality of the content for most of them
• Tutoring is offered for those who are interested
• Hosts a couple movie nights throughout the center
• If you’re looking for a dedicated place to study a language and or want to have access to a bunch of websites for language learning without having to write up a dozen Google searches for each thing you want to learn, the language learning center might be useful

Now if you want a more in-depth analyses of the center, you can read from here:

The advent of the internet created a system of communication like never before seen. Information could be stored and accessed near instantly from places across the globe. With this rise of interconnectedness between different countries came increases in consumption of foreign media. In the U.S foreign mediums such as K-pop, anime, Bollywood, manhwa have become important in the consciousness of many Americans. In order to further appreciate these mediums many people have become interested in learning a foreign language. 

So, for those who are interested in learning a foreign language, the Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Center provides support in your endeavor or at least it tries to. The center advertises itself to have a “large multimedia facility/lecture hall, a lounge, a library, a lab and a multimedia classroom.” Upon seeing such an array of facilities on their website, I thought I should check it out for myself.

The Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Center located on the 2nd floor west building is relatively unassuming. It’s hidden in a corridor behind the classrooms which left me confused about finding the actual room. In front of the center a sign is stationed indicating its open hours: Monday-Thursday 9 AM-8 PM, Friday 9 AM-6 PM, Saturday 12 PM-5 PM, Sunday and Holidays closed. Upon actually entering the center you are greeted by a desk and a staff member, whom you would have to give your ID to in order to gain the right to entry and be assigned a computer. If it’s your first time there you would have to register with the center and fill out some paperwork.

Once I was good to go I entered one of the multimedia rooms.I was greeted by the melancholic ambiance of the room. The oppressive quietness due to there being very few occupants all of whom were working on their own, made it difficult to make a single sound. Who wouldn’t call this a sad sight; One would expect a foreign language room to be a room bustling with sound and conversation. Instead it felt lonely and isolating within its dark confinement as the morning sun just barely managed to light up the room. I had been told that there’s always space in the multimedia room because not many people use it since they have access to the internet at home; I didn’t realize it would be this empty. Admittedly though, I have only gone to the room around 10 on Friday mornings, so it is possible that room starts brimming with life later in the day. 

I headed to my assigned computer towards the back of the room, so I could test its capabilities in regard to language learning. Since I am learning Japanese, I selected it as one of the options on the screen.The other options included Polish, German, Latin, French, Arabic, Chinese Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. After clicking Japanese a list of websites and resources popped up. At a cursory glance at the list of websites they seemed to be mostly grammar, listening, reading, conjugation and character practice. One of them being MyKikkitori which had me listen to a dialogue and answer questions based on it(props to the website for looking sleek instead of being an ugly cluttered 90’s website). Another was a Kanji conjugator which I couldn’t figure out how to work. Honestly none of these websites were particularly groundbreaking and could probably be found with a couple google searches and a look through reddit. The two gems hidden within the cluster of links were Tofugo: a blog style website that delves into the intricacies of grammar and Japanese culture. It’s a website I have used before and has helped me learn basic Japanese characters through its mnemonics. Despite me already being familiar with the website I thought it was a nice website for those getting started on their Japanese language learning journey and though it wasn’t hard to find on the internet, someone just starting out on language learning may not know about it. The other gem was one I never heard of and am glad to have found out about was Japanology Plus hosted on NHK World-Japan. It was a documentary series that delved into the various aspects of Japanese culture and its ongoings. It was fairly well produced and entertaining and something I would watch even without the premise of trying to become familiar with Japanese concepts. 

From what I have talked so far about the multimedia room, it may sound mostly useless. However, I think that for those who have no clue on how to start learning a foreign language from the internet, it may be a good starting point as you don’t have to go through the process of searching through multiple websites before you can actually study. All it takes to start learning in the multimedia room is a couple clicks and then you will find yourself on a grammar website or a vocab website. This is incredibly valuable because I find that often people spend too long trying to figure out the best strategies to learn and getting burned out instead of actually learning. Also if you don’t have a reliable internet connection or want an undisturbed space for studying this may be the room easiest to study a foreign language especially because you know there will always be seats available to use a computer. Another feature that you could use in the multimedia room that I haven’t discussed yet is that you can borrow movies and play them using the media player connected to the computers. This way you can probably play the movies in better quality than what you can probably find online. Unfortunately the selection of movies for Japanese at least wasn’t great, with the only notable mention being Ghost in a Shell. Although for all I know the others may have been great, but I didn’t borrow any movies, so I can’t be sure.

The Leona  and Marcy Chanin Language Center additionally offers tutoring for those that need extra help in their language learning careers and hosts events such as Anime Night or Multilingual Horror movies. I can’t comment on either of the two as I have never participated in them before. You can check the list of events and tutoring hours on the Leona and Marcy  Chanin Language Center website.

Speaking of the website I found that it wasn’t very useful. It was difficult to get an idea on what the multimedia rooms were like and what their capabilities were just from reading the website. You could use the website to check what movies you can borrow in person or see how to take a language placement exam, but other than that there wasn’t much to it. I was disappointed to see that the website didn’t host the resources that were on the multimedia computers as most of it was just links(although some of the material like textbook videos might have been hosted directly on school servers). Personally I would recommend anyone who’s learning a  language at Hunter to go visit the language center once and see for themselves whether they can get use out of it.