As a French speaker of six years, Olive Lemberger has always valued developing her linguistic and cultural knowledge of the language.

“Personally, it is important to me because I think it is important to learn a language,” said Lemberger. “I actually have some family who live in Burkina Faso, which is in Africa, and they actually speak French, and I wanted to have a way to communicate to them.”

As President of Madison College’s French Club, Lemberger will now be able to share her passion for French culture on a larger scale.

With the help of her French classmates, Lemberger found herself reviving the French club that hasn’t been active in a year.

The main goal of the club is to be a platform for French activities that students can partake in, to supplement what they learn in the classroom.

“Basically, we are just trying to offer people experiences that can happen outside of the classroom.”

One of their first activities as a club will be visiting the French House, a French immersion dorm on the UW-Madison campus, to partake in French cuisine and conversation.

In the future, Lemberger hopes the club will be able to host other activities for Madison College students, such as a tour of the Chazen Museum of Art in French, and hosting showings of French movies.

There is also an emphasis on getting Madison College’s native French speaking community involved with the club not only to help French learners practice their conversation skills, but to broaden their view of what French speaking cultures look like.

“We know that we have a lot of native speakers here, so we are trying to get them in contact with students that are taking French classes so that they can practice, and maybe make some new friends, and learn about different Francophone cultures, because it’s not just France. It’s a lot of African counties, and there’s I think one country in South America that uses French,” said Lemberger.

According to Lemberger, the goal of the club is to enrich both the linguistic and cultural experiences French learners can have outside of their classes.

“I think it’s important because it helps students really just enrich their experience. I mean, there’s only so much you can learn when you’re in a classroom, and I think that there’s other types of learning,” said Lemberger.

The French Club meets every other Friday at 10:30 in the Foreign Language Lab in the SAC. Those who are interested in joining can find more information at the French Club’s LINK page.