Language-Immersion Houses Expand to Serve More Students, Cultures

[Harold F. Schiffman]

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i13/13a03801.htm
>>From the issue dated November 18, 2005

Language-Immersion Houses Expand to Serve More Students, Cultures
By JAMIE SCHUMAN

College Park, Md.

A sign in Cyrillic letters stands beside one entrance to St. Mary's Hall
at the University of Maryland at College Park. To those who know how to
read it, the message is: "Russian is spoken here." Inside, Ukrainian flags
hang from the walls, Russian-language magazines sit on coffee tables, and
a Russian newscaster talks on the television. "The idea is that out there
it's America," says Peter Voitsekhovsky, a graduate student and a mentor
for the seven students in the Russian wing of Maryland's
language-immersion dormitory. "Here, you cross the border and it's a
Russian-speaking environment."

About 100 students live in the dorm, which opened in 1989 to help
residents become fluent in foreign languages. Students here discuss
everything food, music, and college football in French, Russian, Spanish,
or one of eight other languages that echo in the hallways. Once thought to
have limited appeal, language-immersion dorms and houses are increasingly
popular on many campuses. Although no organization tracks the number of
residential language programs nationally, administrators from coast to
coast say more students are seeking arrangements that let them live and
breathe a foreign language without leaving their campus.

Over the last decade, as some colleges and universities have established
their first live-in language programs, others have expanded on their
traditional offerings (like French and German houses) to keep up with
growing student interest in languages like Arabic and Japanese. Often,
competition for spaces is keen. At the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, for instance, the waiting list for 110 spaces in the
foreign-language dorm includes several dozen names. Recently, some college
officials asked the Modern Language Association to start a committee to
help institutions develop or expand their residential language programs.

>>From 1998 to 2002, enrollment in foreign-language courses increased by 17
percent, according a 2002 report by the association. The organization
found that the presence of language houses on a campus led more students
there to major in foreign languages. "Students who can practice the
language daily in spontaneous and familiar settings," says Rosemary G.
Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, "are much
more likely to pass that border and go into proficiency."

'Familiar Settings'

Some students agree that round-the-clock conversations in a new language
are crucial to achieving fluency. Elizabeth R. Bowen, who received a
bachelor's degree in Russian from Maryland this year, says living in the
language-immersion dormitory helped prepare her for a graduate program in
Vladimir, Russia. "It draws people in," she says, "in a different way than
just taking a class would." In most language-immersion dorms, students
live with classmates who want to become fluent in the same foreign
language, as well as with a mentor who is a native speaker. Normally, a
university's foreign-language department helps oversee the programs, which
may be in free-standing houses or on floors of dormitories.

The rules of linguistic engagement vary from campus to campus. At the
University of Wisconsin at Madison's French house, for instance, students
are required to speak French at all times. Andrew Irving, the house's
director since 1995, says he tells students they can speak in English only
"if someone is dying." (Guests get more leeway.) At the University of
Virginia's French house, however, residents make their own rules about
when it is okay to say "yes" instead of "oui."

Abroad at Home

Not all residents of such dorms are language majors, though most programs
require students to take language courses and maintain a high grade-point
average. Some students view the dorms, which typically cost the same or
slightly more than other on-campus housing, as cheap alternatives to
studying in another country. "The idea is to get as close to living abroad
as you can when you're still in Cincinnati, Ohio," says Lowanne Jones,
head of the department of Romance languages and literatures at the
University of Cincinnati, which opened a house for French and Spanish this
year. The houses sponsor regular dances, film nights, lectures, and
cooking lessons.

Residents enjoy other perks, too. At Madison's French house, chefs cook
traditional French meals including ratatouille and salmon poached in a
licorice-flavored liqueur twice a week. On Wednesday nights, the house
dining hall opens to the public. The enduring popularity of Madison's
French house, founded in 1918, prompted the university to open a
language-immersion dormitory, with German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese
wings, in 2002. The university plans to open an Arabic section next year.
Cindy A. Havens, coordinator for residence-hall communities at Madison,
says that because of the many languages spoken in the dorm, students there
do not get as many opportunities to converse as those who live in the
French house do. But the dorm's hodgepodge of cultural programming, she
says, gives students a unique multicultural experience.

The same goes for St. Mary's Hall, at Maryland, where 10 language
"clusters," including the newly added Farsi section, live under the same
roof. Students regularly sample global cuisine at progressive dinners,
read each others' essays in a creative-writing group, and cook with herbs
grown by members of the international garden club. Amid the food and fun,
there are rules. Students are required to participate regularly in
conversations and cultural activities.

Each semester Mr. Voitsekhovsky, who oversees the Russian-immersion wing
at Maryland, fills out a two-page evaluation of each student and submits
it to the dorm's director. Residents who get negative reports or do not
earn a B or higher in language courses risk losing their spot in the dorm.
"There must be a genuine commitment to immersion," says Mr.Voitsekhovsky.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Volume 52, Issue 13, Page A38

http://chronicle.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i13/13a03801.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright  2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education