 My name is Amy Parsons. I am the Bengali teacher at the Sowas Language Centre and I'm also a translator working from Bengali into English. My journey into becoming a lecturer in my chosen practice has been quite a long one. I first became interested in the language region when I was about 6 or 7 and that was really due to interactions with the members of the South Asian diaspora in the UK. And I was very lucky to have a very supportive dad who was very interested in languages who used to buy me bilingual books in South Asian languages with the English alongside and that sparked a huge interest. Many years later I ended up doing a master's in Bengali at Sowas University so in Bengali language and culture which subsequently led me into this position. I've been teaching at the language centre for 3 years now. For me the most important thing at the centre is that we aim to represent languages that are rarely taught so in the case of Bengali for example you can only learn it at a handful of institutions and outside of the UK it's very rarely taught as well. This is something that we've seen reflected in the students that have been applying since we went online so we've had a huge number of overseas applicants who cannot learn Bengali in their home countries. I'm really proud of the fact that we represent Bengali because it is an underrepresented language but in terms of world speakers it's huge and it's really important that we teach it. All of the teachers who work at the language centre are specialists not only in the language itself so in terms of the grammar, the vocab and that sort of thing but also the culture of the language. So in the Bengali classes that I teach for example yes you would expect to learn the Bengali language but you will also be learning about things like important cultural events that happen in that part of the world, important historical events that have happened and looking at sources like for example song and poetry as a means to enhance the core language learning. My favourite thing about SOAS I think both as a former student and a teacher it's got to be the music. SOAS has a really strong music department and you get to hear music that you just never would in any other context so it's always amazing to come out of teaching in the evening time, go to the student union and listen to something really wonderful that you're only able to do because you're at SOAS. Teaching and working in London is fantastic particularly for a linguist because in the city of London there are over 300 languages spoken. We have a sizeable Bangladeshi community here as well which is fantastic for my students of Bengali who can go out with their language skills and really apply those on a very practical level in day-to-day situations and I actually have a number of students who are learning Bengali because they work with members of the Bangladeshi community. If I had to sum up the language centre in three words I would say specialist, I would say dynamic and I would say committed in terms of our teaching and committed to the languages that we represent. There are so many reasons why a student should come and study at SOAS and hopefully I've outlined some of those but I think one thing that I'd like to add is about the students themselves that come here. What we find is that students at SOAS often have very specific reasons for studying the subject that they do and they themselves can bring a wealth of knowledge to the classroom so I'm always learning from my students and it's amazing to see the collaborations that occur between them so that's a major a major point but overall you will have a truly unique experience you'll be exposed to so many subjects people from so many walks of life it really is a unique institution both globally and also here in London