"Our idea in coming up with this project was to provide our students in Spanish 1 and 2 with a real dialogue between real people on the Dartmouth campus," she said.
Each video within the series features student conversations in Spanish in a variety of campus locations, including Dartmouh Hall, Food Court, the Green, Dick's House and the Hop. Dialogue relates to daily student life with subject matter like dorm life, illness and romance. All student participants are fluent in Spanish.
All of the actors in the video series are either current Dartmouth students or recent graduates.
While Spanish is the only language spoken in "Entre Amigos," actors' Spanish accents vary greatly due to their different backgrounds.
"We have everything from native speakers, speakers who are children of Spanish-speaking parents but grew up in the Untied States, and then 'gringos' who studied at Dartmouth," Polli said. "We have a mixture of accents. We have a mixture of conjugations. The actors are role models for students who will hopefully use the dialogue to speak on their own."
The Spanish department plans to implement the video series into the Spanish 1 and 2 curricula this summer.
There were 22 student actors who participated in the film and "who worked very hard," Polli said.
Student actor JeanCarlos Bonilla '08 said the creation of the videos was an enjoyable experience.
"It was fun to shoot, to be treated like an actor," Bonilla said.
The video series took three years to complete.
"It's been a long phase," Polli said.
Dartmouth's Media Production Group played a key role in the creation of the series, in both filming and editing, for which Polli expressed appreciation.
"They provided top notch video and sound quality," she said.
Polli, who received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, has studied Spanish, French, German, Latin and Italian languages. Her work at Dartmouth focuses on second language acquisition, teaching foreign languages, the use of literature and art in foreign language teaching, contemporary Spanish literature and translation.
