Senior Lina Mowat said she was one of the shyest people in her class traveling to Oviedo, Spain, in 2013, but by the time she had completed the IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages, she said she felt comfortable speaking a foreign language to complete strangers.
“The program got me out of my shell,” Mowat said.
The IUHPFL is a language immersion program designed for high school students. It entails traveling to a foreign country for part of the summer and taking classes and speaking only in a target language. After five decades years, the program has approximately 8,000 alumni and continues to send approximately 400 students abroad each summer.
The program is built on three pillars: language commitment, academic instruction and host-family experience. Participants also pledge to uphold the honor code while staying with a host family in the country.
“Staying with the host family really gets you more into the culture,” Mowat said.
From the moment they arrive on site, students are not allowed to speak any English and are allowed only one hour of internet a week to talk with family and check social media, said managing director of IUHPFL Loni Dishong.
“At a very early age, our students start to recognize that they are global citizens,” Dishong said.
Twenty-one percent of IU students who are IUHPFL alumni do a yearlong study abroad program, compared to the 9 percent of non-IUHPFL alumni. On average, IUHPFL alumni will test into a fifth-semester college language course, Dishong said.
“Other programs don’t have the same components,” Mowat said. “We have full immersion and staying with the host family. You can’t speak any English, which is a big thing.”
Mowat said the program inspired her to pursue a minor in Spanish alongside her major in dietetics. She now interns for IUHPFL.
Dishong said that around 95 percent of alumni continue some study in their target language. After the program, they have a deeper understanding of the language and become more confident when using it or taking Advanced Placement and other proficiency exams.
“Students say they get a lot of clarity,” Dishong said. “The pieces start to fit together.”
Dishong has been with the IUHPFL program since 2014 and is now organizing the 55th year of the program.
“I think IUHPFL has a really wonderful combination of factors,” Dishong said. “It really boils down to the three pillars of the program.”
IUHPFL offers programs in Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese. There are 12 program sites, with locations in France, China, Austria, Chile, Japan, Mexico and Spain, including a new program site in Quebec City, Canada.
The IUHPFL alumni have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and more. Most have kept in contact with their host families, creating a network of friends across the globe, Dishong said.
Dishong said that in the next five years, the program aims to reach out to more students and teachers and get as close to 400 participants a year as it can. She said that as more languages are taught in Indiana schools, the program hopes to add more languages as well.
