PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 16, March 3, 2005

Spanish students get real-world experience, do service work

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Spanish spoken here Spanish professors Ann Abbott (left), director of the Spanish Intermediate Language Program, and Darcy Lear, director of the Spanish Basic Language Program, are overhauling three courses to better prepare students to use their language skills in the business world. The courses bring students in contact with Spanish-speaking people in Champaign and Urbana through community service work and videotaped interviews.

UI students taking Spanish courses are learning language skills by helping people in the local Spanish-speaking community.

Ann Abbott, a professor and director of the Spanish intermediate language program, and Darcy Lear, a professor and director of the Spanish basic language program, in the department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, are revamping some existing Spanish courses to prepare students from all academic disciplines to use bilingualism in business settings while performing service work for local organizations that need people who speak Spanish.

Using a grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement, Abbott and colleague Amy Swanson, an academic adviser and teaching associate, redesigned Spanish 232, “Intensive Spoken Spanish,” so that instead of four hours each week in the classroom, students spend two hours each week of their own time working at the Refugee Center in Urbana and two days a week in the classroom doing traditional activities.

At the center, students may translate documents, file or do other routine office tasks such as answering phones. Or they may help Spanish-speaking people with their English skills in preparation for their citizenship tests.

“The students may go out into the community with the center’s staff, and they’ve done things like assist a woman who was giving birth and was not an English speaker,” said Abbott, who taught the course during the fall semester. “The students never know what kind of services they’ll be called upon to provide because there are lots of needs in the community and things just pop up.”

Interacting with Spanish-speaking people in the community not only gives students opportunities to practice their language skills in natural conversations, it also dispels stereotypes that some of the students may have about people from other cultures. Personal contact also fosters compassion, Abbott said, as the students see firsthand the various challenges facing the center’s clients, for whom even mundane tasks such as obtaining medical care, finding jobs or enrolling children in public schools can become complex problems because of language barriers and legal issues.

“A lot of the students were thinking about careers in law or education and for them it was an opportunity to see that ‘Oh, my gosh, these laws are hurting these people’ or that there are problems that need to be fixed,” Abbott said. “Many times it was simply a matter of people from different cultural backgrounds coming here and facing a legal system that fits our culture and not theirs. Very little things can have very grave consequences, especially if they are undocumented workers.”

By bringing their experiences in the community back to the classroom and seeking help with language skills, understanding issues such as immigration laws or just venting the frustrations or other emotions that arise during their work at the center, the students become creators of the course content rather than passive consumers, Abbott said.

Each week, the students in the course also use a departmental Webcam to make 5-minute videotapes of themselves talking about an assigned topic and expanding upon it with their personal experiences.

“It really challenges your notion of being the teacher because you’re not even with them when they’re learning,” Abbott said. “I had to learn to tell myself to stop planning all these lessons that were structured to contain what I thought they needed and ask the students, ‘What do you need?’ That was definitely a change.”

Lear also is overhauling Spanish 142, “Spanish in the Professions,” formerly titled “Intermediate Spanish for Business,” to make the content more germane to the professional environment most Illinois students may face after college and to prepare them to use bilingualism in work settings.

With the support of a grant from the UI Center for International Business Education and Research, Lear videotaped interviews with 12 bilingual professionals – including a police officer, a veterinarian, a stock broker, an attorney, a Web designer and a mental health professional – from the Champaign-Urbana community. They discussed their occupations, seminal events in their careers, how they use Spanish language skills in their day-to-day work and also offered advice to students considering entering their occupation. While the curriculum is still under development, Lear said that she is basing the course content on the needs expressed to her by working professionals.

“It just raises students’ awareness that they could need Spanish in all these professions within the United States, that Spanish is a language of the United States and that knowing it could improve their own marketability as workers,” Lear said. “I also want to dispel the belief that all Spanish speakers are working-class people, migrant workers or illegal immigrants from Mexico. That’s why I’m using only bilingual professionals, who are not necessarily native Spanish speakers. I want students to see that you can use Spanish across the socioeconomic spectrum.”

Abbott and Lear also plan to redesign Spanish 202, “Spanish for Business.” The course, which is being partially funded by a grant from the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership in the College of Business, will challenge students to identify an unmet need relative to the Spanish-speaking community and devise a product or service to satisfy that need using their Spanish skills.

Lear is assembling a network of businesses and organizations in the community that need people with Spanish skills and would welcome the students working with them.

“What will be important at their jobs will be their ability to use their Spanish to communicate with the labor force or perhaps do international trade, not write their resumes in Spanish as the old course had them do,” Abbott said. “Most of our students aren’t going to be applying for jobs in Spanish-speaking countries; they’re going to be applying for jobs in the United States, and they’ll need to be bilingual.”

“We’re trying to give the students a base to build upon, so that later they can add the specialized vocabulary that they need for their profession, whatever that may be,” Abbott said.

Their work in the community not only offers students opportunities to practice their language skills and learn firsthand about other cultures, it also gives them experience in community service work, which can be a defining experience for some students, Abbott said. After taking the 232 course in the fall, one student decided to join the Peace Corps; another student, who is a Mexican-American and heritage Spanish speaker, said it offered her an opportunity to connect with her community and use her bilingual skills for the good of the community.

“I got some wonderful feedback from the students who said that they felt like for the first time their Spanish was being put to good use,” Abbott said.

The community-based learning component in Spanish 232 also offers an added benefit of enabling the department to double enrollment because the learning is not instructor-centered, Abbott said. Beginning in spring 2006, enrollment will be expanded from 24 to 48 students, serving twice as many students with the same number of instructors and resources.

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