A Cross-Departmental Approach to Supporting Students with a Disability Affecting Foreign Language Acquisition

Union lists the ability to communicate in a foreign language and to understand another
culture as an important objective in their language education policy. Knowledge of
a foreign language is also an important objective for many American universities, which
require students to study a foreign language as a prerequisite to graduate. Students
with documented disabilities aff ecting the learning of a foreign language or students
with poor foreign language learning skills, therefore, pose a signifi cant challenge,
since a foreign language requirement may prevent such students from graduating
unless universities are willing to make special arrangements such as having students
graduate without fulfi lling the requirement or letting them take substitution classes.  e
question of what to do with such students is at the heart of this article. It describes how
one mid-sized private university with a two-year language profi ciency requirement has
approached the problem to ensure that policies are implemented fairly. Rather than
pulling students out of the foreign language classroom, the university succeeded in
keeping students engaged with foreign language study through advising and mentoring
across departments.