Worlds Apart?: Disability and Foreign Language Learning

283 Pages·2008·2.81 MB·English

by  Tammy Berberi

Worlds Apart?
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Worlds Apart?
Disability and Foreign Language Learning
Edited by
TAMMY BERBERI University of Minnesota, Morris
ELIZABETH C. HAMILTON Oberlin College
IAN M. SUTHERLAND Gallaudet University
Foreword by
SANDER L. GILMAN
Yale University Press New Haven and London
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Copyright © 2008 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in New Aster by Duke & Company, Devon, Pennsylvania.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sutherland, Ian M., 1956–
Worlds apart? : disability and foreign language learning / edited by Tammy Berberi,
Elizabeth C. Hamilton, Ian M. Sutherland ; foreword by Sander L. Gilman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-11630-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Language and languages—Study and
teaching. 2. Students with disabilities. I. Berberi, Tammy, 1969– II. Hamilton,
Elizabeth C., 1965– III. Title.
P53.818W67 2008
418.0071—dc22
2007024027
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee
on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For teachers and students
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Partout je rencontrais des contraintes, nulle part la nécessité.
Everywhere I encountered limits, nowhere necessity.
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée
Ich [habe] weder Blick noch Schritt in fremde Lande getan als in der Absicht,
das allgemein Menschliche, was über den ganzen Erdboden verbreitet und
verteilt ist, unter den verschiedensten Formen kennen zu lernen und solches
in meinem Vaterlande wiederzufinden, anzuerkennen, zu fördern.
I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose
of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over
the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in
my own country and to recognize and to further them.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, letter to Johann L. Büchler
Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
I am a human being; I consider nothing human alien to me.
—TERENCE, Heauton Timoroumenos
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Contents
Foreword by Sander L. Gilman ix
Acknowledgments xiii
ONE Bridging Worlds Apart: Disability and Foreign Languages
Where We Live and Learn — Tammy Berberi 1
Teaching and Curricular Design
TWO Teaching German to Students Who Are Blind: A Personal
Essay on the Process of Inclusion — Elizabeth C. Hamilton 23
THREE Everybody Wins: Teaching Deaf and Hearing Students
Together — Ian M. Sutherland 42
FOUR Making a Difference: Evaluating, Modifying, and Creating
Inclusive Foreign Language Activities — Teresa Cabal Krastel 70
FIVE ASL: The Little Language That Could — Brenda Jo
Brueggemann 93
SIX Teaching Foreign Languages to Students with Disabilities:
Initiatives to Educate Faculty — Rasma Lazda-Cazers and
Helga Thorson 107
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viii Contents
Technology
SEVEN Incorporating Foreign Sign Language in Foreign Language
Instruction for Deaf Students: Cultural and Methodological
Rationale — Pilar Piñar, Donalda Ammons, and Facundo
Montenegro 137
EIGHT In Dialogue with Michelle N. Abadia: My Life Journey
Studying and Teaching with Adaptive Technology — Interviewed
by Elizabeth C. Hamilton and Tammy Berberi 151
NINE New Technologies and Universal Design for Learning in the
Foreign Language Classroom — Nicole Strangman, Anne Meyer,
Tracey Hall, and C. Patrick Proctor 164
Disabilities Abroad
TEN Cédez le passage: A Chronicle of Traveling in France with
a Disability — Elizabeth Emery 181
ELEVEN Awaiting a World Experience No Longer: It’s Time for All
Students with Disabilities to Go Overseas — Michele Scheib and
Melissa Mitchell 202
TWELVE Dis/Abling the Narrative: The Case of Tombéza — Salwa
Ali Benzahra 219
THIRTEEN No One’s Perfect: Disability and Difference in Japan —
Katharina Heyer 232
Abbreviations 253
List of Contributors 255
Index 259
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Foreword
Who is different? Well, in real terms, everyone. Who is seen as dif-
ferent? Now that is a very different question. Norms in society are
always compromises between perceived extremes. In the world of
Disability Studies, where such compromises are studied, they are
revealed to be fluid and dynamic. They reflect changing assumptions
about physical and mental difference in the culture(s) in which they
arise. Scholars of Disability Studies deal with representations of
difference as well as with the very mechanisms of perception and
articulation that make such representations possible. In other words,
images of difference are generated and studied through precisely the
same lens or paradigms or mechanisms as “foreign” languages. And
yet, it is really only with this book that the links between the pedagogi-
cal, social, cultural, and psychological aspects of “foreign” language
learning and Disability Studies have come to the fore as a serious
topic of investigation by the leaders in each field. Approaches such
as those described in Katharina Heyer’s “No One’s Perfect: Disability
and Difference in Japan” show how texts representing disability can
be used in the “foreign” language classroom to introduce a language
and a culture different from the culture in which the learner lives.
All of the chapters in this brilliant collection reveal intersections
between the pragmatic and the analytic, between the teaching of
language and the teaching of culture(s), between the world of Dis-
ability Studies and that of “foreign” language learning.
Those of you who are close readers will have noticed something
in the above paragraph: “foreign” is in scare quotes; disability is
not. Disability Studies has a long history, beginning with the social
service structures that developed in the eighteenth century in Eu-
rope to provide a pragmatic education to (at least initially) the blind
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