When Luz Berd was 17, she studied in Washington, D.C, as a foreign exchange student from Mexico City. She had been a good student in her high school English classes in Mexico, but when she got to the United States, she found herself looking at people with blank stares.
”I was totally unable to function,” said Berd, now 48. ”I couldn`t understand a single word.”
Berd, who moved to Chicago in 1964, remembers the frustration. And she realizes now that the only way she finally learned the language was by immersing herself in it.
While an assistant professor at George Williams College in 1974, Berd started a Spanish Immersion Program that enabled students to escape to an idyllic lakeside setting in Lake Geneva, Wis.
There, the adult, high school and college students signed a pledge saying they would throw away their English vocabulary for an entire weekened and speak only Spanish.
”Students often learn how to memorize and how to pass tests, but they don`t actually learn the language,” Berd said. ”They have to think it and live it. That`s the only way they`ll really be able to learn it.”
Since then, more than 5,000 students have participated in the programs, which have been expanded to include immersion weekends in French, German and Italian.
Berd last week signed a contract with Illinois Benedictine College to bring her immersion programs to the school in west suburban Lisle. George Williams College closed in December.
She hopes to start the next immersion weekend in the spring at a site not yet undetermined.
The programs, which cost $135, include cultural lessons, ethnic meals and Saturday night sessions that enable participants to sing and act out skits in the foreign language of the weekend. Classes are taught with a 10 to 1 student-teacher ratio.
”It`s like being in a foreign country,” said Ana King, 27, of Evanston, who went to the first Spanish program in 1974 when she was a junior at Evanston Township High School.
”I had been taking Spanish since I was in the sixth grade, and I learned a lot of verbs. I learned a lot of grammar,” she said. ”But not until I went on the immersion did I feel that I was really using the language. It was like someone took my training wheels off.”
King continued attending the weekends through high school and college and then decided to use her skills to teach English as a second language at the National College of Education`s Chicago campus. She now is assistant teacher for the immersion weekends.
Dorina Spiering, 34, who teaches Italian and French at Lyons Township High School in west suburban LaGrange, said most of her students who attend the program come back with confidence that they can use the language.
”Maybe they need a dictionary in their hand, but they can do it,” she said.
Spiering, who directed the Italian immersion weekends while the program was at George Williams College, said the students` increased enthusiasm often translated into better grades.
That was the case with Jeff Ware, 23, of Greencastle, Ind. While a sophomore at north suburban Deerfield High School, Ware went on his first Spanish immersion program as a B student. He came back with the confidence that he could tackle the language, and his grades improved.
He later used his knowledge of the language to volunteer in rural areas of Latin America, including Honduras and Paraguay. He now is a high school Spanish teacher and encourages his students to attend the program, where he is also an assistant teacher.
Some people go to the immersions for the fun of it. Jim Muench, 76, of north suburban Wilmette, went to his first weekend in 1978 and has since attended eight. Muench, a lawyer, enjoys the skits the groups perform on Saturday nights and composes Spanish songs for the weekends.
