About US-LA
The U.S. Language Ambassador Program (US-LA) is established by teenagers in the United States and promotes friendly conversation between students in the U.S. and their peers in other countries. The program is free of charge, subject to availability.
Through half-hour to hour conversations in English using Zoom video conferencing, five or fewer participants learning English have the opportunity to ask questions about what it is like to live in the United States as a teen while applying their English language skills learned in their local language program.
Appropriate skill levels range from participants using simple vocabulary to more advanced participants looking to practice their fluency and looking to achieve a deeper cultural experience.
How US-LA Started
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Anika Hofmeyer had experiences with children seeking to learn English in Mexico. With the increased use of video conferencing tools due to the pandemic, Anika felt she could utilize this technology to help children in Mexico practice their English with native English-speaking teenagers, and also provide an open forum to discuss what it is like to be a teenager both in the United States and in Mexico.
As a result, Anika created the U.S. Language Ambassador Program (www.US-LA.org) and immediately began conversations with students in Germany access to online resources was more readily available to students. Of Mexican decent, Anika is looking to further support teenagers in Mexico to help them practice their English, and in the future, she plans to expand and help Chinese language speakers practice English using the same US-LA approach. She is expanding US-LA to support students from additional countries with the help of United States-based teenage volunteers.
About Anika
Anika Hofmeyer attends New York University majoring in Applied Psychology (Class of 2028).
Her love of language started while attending a bilingual Spanish/English immersion school at age five and six. When she was nearly seven years old, she happened to also spend a week in a Mandarin focused summer camp. After the first week of class, she learned to count from one to one hundred in Mandarin and write the characters for 1 to 10. This experience had her hooked, and she has both taken Mandarin courses or self-studied since then. She has also embraced her Mexican background by taking Spanish language classes at Alameda High School, where she continued through AP Spanish 5.
Anika has traveled to over 14 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, and has helped support events with her foreign language skills both in San Francisco and Beijing, including an event with representatives from the US Embassy in Beijing. She is a recipient of the The U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) Scholarship in Mandarin for summer 2022 (done virtually instead of in-person in 2022 due to COVID). She also visits Mexico several weeks per year and has volunteered at a language school for Mexican children to help them learn English as a second language. She has also been part of the social media team responsible for promoting fund raising events for an orphanage in Mexico by ensuring that the captions/designs in English/Spanish communicated their intended messaging.
Anika hopes to combine these interests in culture, language, and psychology towards her future career.
