Students of Spanish are learning the language in new ways by being immersed in the culture of Evansville’s growing Latino community.
Service learning components have allowed foreign language students to teach English while learning Spanish since the spring of 2010, said Manuel Apodaca-Valdez, assistant professor of Spanish and a coordinator of the program.
USI students provide language assistance and teaching services for two hours each week to Spanish-speaking children in the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) and to adult Spanish-speakers through a local organization called Educational and Cultural Advancement for Latinos (EDUCA) of which Apodaca-Valdez is the vice president.
“The program has been very successful for USI students and also for the Latino students in the schools,” Apodaca-Valdez said. “Most students love to do service learning.”
Heather Summitt, a junior Spanish and pre-nursing student, said she enjoyed her experience last semester.
Summit helped teach adult English classes and assisted with childcare at Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer for EDUCA.
“What I learned the most is that it is really hard to learn English,” Summitt said.
In 2000, just over 1 percent of Evansville residents were of Hispanic or Latino origin, and almost 4 percent of total residents came from households in which a language other than English was spoken, according to census data.
Those numbers have only grown if USI’s Hispanic student enrollment is any indication of the community at large.
Hispanic students represented almost 2 percent of undergraduates last fall, and the number of Hispanic undergraduates has more than doubled since 2005 and more than tripled since 2001, according to the USI Office of Planning, Research and Assessment.
“There’s a lot of people in the Hispanic community who want to learn English but don’t have the resources to do it,” Summitt said.
Arcea Zapata, president and founder of EDUCA, said the benefits are great to students and native Spanish-speakers.
“By doing this, students learn first hand the Spanish language and the way the Latinos operate in the American society,” Zapata said.
“The Latinos, in turn, love them because they can practice the English language from a native speaker perspective and they also have a chance to learn first hand about the Anglo culture and American society,” she said. “The exchange of ideas and culture is phenomenal.”
The increasing number of students studying Spanish combined with the program’s popularity has caused there to be more student volunteers than needed, Apodaca-Valdez said.
There has been a significant growth in the number of students minoring in Spanish, increasing nearly 78 percent from 2005 and tripling since 2001, and the number of students taking Spanish as a first major has more than doubled since 2005 and experienced the same growth rate from 2001 as Spanish minors.
Because of this, students will now be able to work with the Metropolitan Evansville Transit System (METS) to conduct focus groups with Latinos and determine their needs for public transportation services in Spanish.
The results of the meetings may lead to the translation of area bus routes into Spanish, Apodaca-Valdez said.
Apodaca-Valdez and Zapata agreed that student volunteerism is welcomed and appreciated by the Latino community.
“They definitely appreciate our help because without volunteers it wouldn’t be possible,” Summit said.
