Why Go Abroad to Learn a Language?

As international experience and foreign language learning become curriculum and graduation requirements at educational institutions across the United States and around the world, students with disabilities will inevitably be taking foreign language courses and studying abroad more than ever. Already, students with disabilities account for three percent of college students studying abroad, according to an email survey conducted by Mobility International USA and the Institute of International Education.

“I needed at least six foreign language credits; it is required of all majors,” says Alison Ballard, a visually impaired student who is an English theater major and voice minor at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. She earned all six credits in Spanish over the summer as a study abroad student in Costa Rica.

Leslie Weilbacher, who also is blind, chose to study in Germany to fulfill some of her foreign language requirements at the University of Oregon. “My major is comparative literature so I have to be proficient in another language and studying abroad is just short of being required,” says Weilbacher, whose father’s family is originally from Germany. “I think that after I finish this degree if I don’t immediately go into graduate school, I’d want to go into the Peace Corps. Not that there are a lot of volunteer opportunities in the German-speaking countries but knowing another language helps.”

Alison Ecker, who is hard of hearing, is also pursing a comparative literature degree with a language requirement at the University of Oregon. She is considering a study abroad experience in Italy, but her desire to learn Italian and visit the country stems from more than a requirement. “I’ve always thought it was a beautiful language, and I think it would be cool to work abroad in Italy. It’s always been fascinating to me to meet people from other countries and learn about their customs, food, and language,” she says. “I really think I need to learn from the locals, because there are so many idiomatic expressions that I can’t learn from the book. Also, it would help to hear it used in everyday situations not just the classroom setting. The pronunciation is another thing that even though my teachers speak very fluent Italian, I think it would help to hear Italians speaking it.”

Dayna DeFeo, an adjunct instructor of Spanish at New Mexico State University-Carlsbad, agrees that there are benefits to learning a foreign language overseas. “The limited way languages are taught in the university setting is not really congruent with what linguistics and empirical data says about language learning. Really the best way is to immerse yourself in the language and to put yourself in the situation where you are practicing it all day and you have no choice but to try it,” she says. “Also language and culture are so intertwined, that viewing the culture would augment foreign language learning as well as just seeing other worldviews, appreciating other societies, governments and structures. I think for people with disabilities, it’s all the same benefits.”

Overcoming obstacles to traveling abroad in order to experience a language-rich environment often entails plenty of advanced planning, flexibility, creativity, and a willingness to take a leap into the unknown. “It is always good to try and do what you want to do. I think that sometimes Deaf people, or disabled people in general, are often told they cannot or should not do something, and in my experience this advice has never been right,” says Sarah Franz, who is Deaf and was discouraged from going with her high school Spanish class to Mexico. She later went overseas twice as a college student. “Sometimes people tend to listen [to naysayers] because they believe these other people know what’s best. Traveling can be frustrating, but I am so glad I did it. It really taught me a lot about myself and empowered me.”

The same is true for Josue Medrano, a wheelchair user who studied and taught abroad in Brazil. “I was interested in another language. Since I speak Spanish as my heritage language, it was easy to grasp Portuguese. Ever since I was in high school, I wanted to travel so it was a big achievement that I was able to go to Brazil and stay a long time,” he says.

“When I told people that I was studying at the Arizona Russian Institute, they were curious about the techniques I used to do my classwork,” wrote Jennifer Dunnam in the Braille Monitor newsletter. Dunnam, who is blind, studied abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the early 1990s. She rented a Cyrillic typewriter for US$10 per month, and used it for her assignments so that the teachers could read her work. During class, she took Braille notes with a slate and stylus, and hired a reader for homework assignments and tests. “Let those who say that blind people need special services and programs set up before they can have access to study in foreign countries take note: I don’t believe a word of it,” she says. “If a blind person has the basic skills needed to succeed in college in the United States, there’s no reason why he or she can’t study abroad.”

Interactions in a Foreign Language Environment

While students with disabilities may see learning a language overseas as a worthwhile pursuit, the idea of being in a completely new environment where they must depend on their language skills can be intimidating. In the following section, students with sensory and mobility disabilities share their experiences communicating and navigating in a foreign country and in a foreign language abroad.  A previous issue of the AWAY journal includes stories from students with learning and cognitive disabilities on the impact of language courses, host families and immersion in the community in aiding them to understand and function in the foreign language abroad.

Language Courses

“I did not expect what I found in Moscow, which was that apart from students, civil servants, intellectuals and artists there were very few people who spoke a language other than Russian. I hit a huge wall. I could ask basic questions, and I could kind of read but ‘Wow!’ I heavily relied on what I learned in my Russian courses just to be able to walk into a supermarket and get a chicken (and not end up with a salad),” says Julie Sanfaçon, who has a visual impairment and took courses at Russian State University for the Humanities. She made it through the initial cultural adjustment, and reflects back fondly on the whole experience. “Studying abroad is an extraordinary experience that enabled me to learn foreign languages, gain international experience and meet exciting challenges. It was essential to immerse myself in a Russian-speaking environment to learn the language properly.”

Franz, who is Deaf, also depended on three hours of daily beginning Italian courses  to feel more comfortable interacting with the local community. “I am a good lip reader and use a hearing aid, which is okay in English but Italian was a lot harder for me. I practiced how to say the words a lot and had my teacher help me one on one,” says Franz who studied abroad on a University of Michigan program in Siesto Fiorentino, a town outside of Florence, Italy. “I could actually carry on some conversations with people in Italy I met; I could order food in a restaurant or at a vendor. Granted it can be very frustrating but it is frustrating for anyone. The people I met were usually very nice because they were used to Americans who barely knew any Italian. They just assumed the same for me and they spoke more slowly and repeated things.  Sometimes I think being deaf was an advantage, because I am already used to miscommunications.”

Sarah Presley, who is blind and joined the Peace Corps in Morocco, appreciated the three months of language training she had in Arabic before being placed in a Rabat community. “We learned Moroccan Arabic and the teaching method depended heavily on listening and speaking,” she says. “Language instruction proved to be the most important aspect of the initial training for me. Because I am not able to see people’s gestures and facial expressions, I found that learning the language and learning it fast was an absolute necessity.” 

Host Families

Living with a host family provides another avenue for developing one’s language skills while abroad, including opportunities  to learn foreign sign languages that often aren’t offered as courses in the United States. “I thought it would be difficult to learn German Sign Language, but thankfully I had a Deaf host family who had no clue about English,” says Christine Roschaert, who is DeafBlind and spent a year at a high school in Germany through Rotary International. “Through their sign language conversation, and common sense, I quickly picked it up. I also had a tutor who was a former exchange student, so with his attention I picked it up very fast!”

When Franz traveled to Costa Rica after her Italy experience, she was initially disappointed when the exchange organization was unable to place her in a Deaf host family. Yet, she still had a wonderful experience writing back and forth in Spanish with her host parents. “My host sister’s boyfriend was studying English, so we taught each other. It was a fair deal,” Franz says. “I also learned LESCO (Costa Rican Sign Language) from another Deaf girl on the trip and her Deaf host family. We hung out with local Deaf people at night. It was very cool to learn some LESCO and improve my Spanish.”

Similarly, Ballard who is blind, improved her Spanish in Costa Rica by talking with her 13-year-old host sister, who was learning English. “We’d play games together where I’d talk to her in Spanish and she’d talk to me in English, so it was really helpful. When I tried to speak Spanish in stores and in the community, it was still jerky but people seemed to get the idea,” says Ballard.

Community Connections

For those who don’t have an opportunity to live with a host family, immersion in the local community becomes vital to language acquisition. When selecting a program overseas, it is important to consider what the primary language is at the language center, university or throughout the host country. In many countries, and especially in cities with high tourist traffic, English is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is spoken widely on the streets, even though the first or national language is not English.

“One great distinction for me between learning Spanish and learning Arabic has been the constant reinforcement,” says Kristin Hoobler Morgan, who has a learning disability. She excelled from the experiential learning she had while studying abroad in Granada, Spain, during college, which eventually led her to earn a degree in Spanish. Currently she is working with college students in Qatar, and taking Arabic courses. “When I studied Spanish I was in total immersion. Here in Qatar I am working in a totally English speaking university system. Although 90% of the student population speaks Arabic fluently, the language of instruction and business is always English. This does not help me in retaining the little bit of Arabic that I have gotten through lessons.”

Similarly, some study abroad programs are “island programs” in which students are taught in English and participants hang out primarily with other study abroad students instead of integrating with the local community for language practice. Those who seek out immersion opportunities outside of the classroom often note marked improvement in communication. For some students, this may mean connecting with the disability or Deaf community in the foreign country.

Naomi Collette assisted a Deaf student from Japan who was enrolled in the intensive English language program at Tokyo International University of America affiliated with Willamette University in Oregon. “She had strong motivation that she is not any different [than her hearing peers]. That is the main reason she didn’t want to use sign language in Japan,” Collette recalls. “Then she understood that sign language is like any other language such as French, Japanese, English, and that was a huge change for her. She became interested in American Sign Language (ASL) and learned it from a friend.”

On the other hand, not all international students with disabilities will choose to immerse themselves in the local disability community, even when the benefits include more than language improvement. “When I was in San Francisco, I had just began as a wheelchair user so I didn’t know how to discuss with other people about my wheelchair or my feelings. I wanted to be independent, so I avoided people with disabilities,” says Yusaku Iida, a Japanese student with a spinal cord injury who studied English in a city that is known for its strong disability community, which could have provided him with useful suggestions for achieving that sought after independence.

Medrano did not hesitate to get in touch with others with disabilities when he planned his experience in Brazil. “I did some web searching and I found a person who is in a wheelchair over there an hour from São Paulo, and he helped me find a personal assistant. The assistant drove me to my traineeship, and in the afternoon he would help me go to the store. We became good friends,” says Medrano, who is Latino and stayed at a fully accessible, but economical hotel. “He didn’t speak English, which was good for me. There’s lots of crossover between Portuguese and Spanish, so I would just try to say something as much as I could. It was easy to pick up the language and wasn’t an issue at all.”

Sanfaçon, who is blind and studied at a university in Russia, turned to (and away from) other university students to improve her language skills. “There was a big issue of isolation for me at first because I didn’t want to spend time with the other study abroad students. But, it’s the chicken and egg thing – I can’t go out a lot because I don’t speak Russian and I can’t speak Russian because I don’t go out. The only thing to do was to get away from the international student environment because we would all speak English since it was the lingua franca,” says Sanfaçon. “What I actually did was contact the international students office and ask if there was a Russian student interested in learning my language, and we would do language tutoring. That worked splendidly. I could engage in conversation by the end of the year because I really put myself out there and did not depend on the university with so few hours of class. My oral communication skyrocketed.”

Benefits of Language Learning Overseas

Aside from making international friends and learning about a new culture, improving one’s foreign language skills is often the most expected benefit of studying abroad. When Ballard returned from Costa Rica, she found: “My Spanish experienced a huge change. I could actually talk in sentences. That was great! I went there only knowing how to conjugate a few verbs, which was kind of useless. Now I’m hoping to continue.”

Roschaert, who has progressive DeafBlindness, experienced similar success on her Rotary Youth Exchange program. “After my year-long stay in Germany, I became quite fluent in German and went to the top of my class when it came to speaking, reading and writing German.”

Amy Pasterczyk, foreign language chair at Purnell, a school for girls with learning disabilities in New Jersey, leads short exchanges to language schools in France each year. In her French classes back at Purnell, she notes differences between those who have had this overseas experience and those who haven’t. “[The students who went overseas] are able to be the experts in class by throwing in little pieces of information that none of the other students had any idea about because they didn’t have the hands on experience,” she says. “With the more advanced students, I notice when they do free reading aloud, they have less hesitation in speaking and in being more willing to just jump in there and go for it. Even when they are making guesses on how something sounds, they are more accurate with it.”

Collette noticed dramatic changes in the Deaf Japanese student who attended intensive English courses in Oregon. “Her English improved a lot. Her TOFEL score was higher than any other student,” she says, noting that for Deaf students complete reading and writing, not listening, portions of the test. This enabled the student to apply for a degree program at another U.S. university.  

Mark Kreidler, who has seen many international Deaf students go through the Northern Virginia Community College system, notes that success varies among the Deaf students as much as among international hearing students. However, he too has seen some international Deaf students studying English transfer to other institutions and continue for a degree.

For some U.S. students with disabilities, foreign language skills provide not only access abroad but also access when they return home. A few U.S. students with disabilities mentioned having parents or relatives who are immigrants to the United States and speak other languages. While most of these students spoke only English at home, they were influenced by their cultural backgrounds to learn their parents’ languages. Upon returning home, many students appreciated their ability to communicate in their heritage language.

Having gone abroad and learned another language has also given U.S. students with disabilities increased confidence and motivation to travel again. “It opens the door for me to go again somewhere else. I want to go back to Brazil and go to Egypt – it’s just a really good way to feel more self-secure,” says Medrano, the wheelchair user who took Portuguese courses and studied abroad in Brazil.

Franz, the Deaf student who studied abroad in Italy, agrees: “In general, it’s a good experience to try new things! I am glad I had the opportunity because it makes me a lot more independent. Had I lived there and not learned the language, not talked with the Italian people, it would have been a lot less enriching for me.”

In the final article of this AWAY issue, learn how people with disabilities can teach their native languages overseas. Americans with disabilities share their joys and frustrations in teaching English to students in countries around the world.