Iowa City Press Citizen, IA
06-20-07
Sophie Donta had a major reason for wanting to learn French: her family.
Rob Daniel
Her grandmother, Antoinette Begin, and mother, Helene Donta, came to Iowa from the city of Nancy in northeastern France when Helene Donta was 6 years old. When Sophie Donta was in fourth grade, she began taking weekly French lessons from her grandmother.
"I wanted to learn it so I could talk in French," said Donta, 13, who recently completed eighth grade at Northwest Junior High.
Donta is part of a growing trend in the United States of either immigrants, or the children of immigrants, who have lost touch with their family's native language and are working to learn it.
According to a 2002 survey by the Association of Departments of Foreign
Languages, more than 1.3 million people at colleges and universities were enrolled in some foreign language courses besides Latin or ancient Greek. It is an increase from about 608,000 in 1960 and about 1.1 million who were enrolled in 1995, the survey said. The report did not indicate whether they were heritage language learners.
Spanish was the most popular language with more than 746,000, or 55 percent, of the students, followed by French and German, the same report said. However, enrollments in classes for American Sign Language, Arabic and Hebrew have increased sharply since 1998, including a 92.3 percent increase in Arabic learners, the report said.
Iowa City does not have a lot of large heritage areas like other cities, but it does have some informal programs, said Diana Davies, University of Iowa
International Programs director. The UI Russian program has used long distance technology for classes in Czech and Polish, while Asian languages such as
Chinese and Japanese -- a language taught in the Iowa City School District until
2000 -- and Spanish and Portuguese have become more popular among students, she said.
"You find people who fill out courses based on their national heritage," Davies said.
Language programs for younger students, both in public schools and private programs, have become more popular as well as parents seeking to ensure their children's links to older generations.

The Chinese School of Iowa City, for example, has about 120 students enrolled, half of whom are Chinese, said Peter Chen, the school's co-director.
Started in 1993 in the Hawkeye Drive apartments community room, it was suggested to the UI Chinese Student and Scholar Association to start a class on
Chinese language and culture for UI exchange students from China.
Wei Bo, a teacher at the Chinese School that meets at the Chinese Church of
Iowa City in North Liberty, said children are encouraged to take the language courses so they can continue to talk with grandparents and other family members who remain in China.
"It's one of the more popular languages in the world," she said. "(Parents) can communicate with their children. Most of (the children) forget their Chinese."
Being able to speak with family is one reason Kevin Liu, 7, of Iowa City, has been taking Chinese at the scho ol for the past 1½ years.
"It keeps the culture going," said his mother, Mei Shi, a native of Beijing. "My parents are still in China, so each time we call, I want my son to communicate with them."
A full immersion of English and Spanish is in place in the West Liberty School
District, which boasts an enrollment that is nearly 50 percent Hispanic, most of them from Mexico. In its dual language program in one section per grade at West
Liberty Elementary, students split their instruction time between English and
Spanish, regardless of their native language or abilities in that language, said
Paula Wood, the district's translator and family liaison.
"We consider it a 50-50 program, with half native English and native Spanish," she said. "They're bilingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural."
A chance for success in business and diplomacy is another reason for children to learn their family's language, parents and educators say. Last year, the U.S.
Education Department awarded a $1.3 million grant to the Center for World
Languages at the University of California-Los Angeles and to start the National
Heritage Language Resource Center in Los Angeles. The center now has 15 branches, including the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center at
Iowa State University, to preserve languages.
Shuzhen Li, co-director of the Chinese School of Iowa City, said she encouraged her daughter to learn Chinese despite her unwillingness to do so. Li said she thought her daughter would benefit in college and her career because many young Chinese are familiar with American companies.

"When she gets into college, she has a second language," Li said. "For children, when they grow up in America, it's a big benefit for them."
Reach Rob Daniel at 339-7360 or rdaniel@press-citizen.com
.