Language & International Health, BS
Clemson University
Samples of Coursework
Linguistic Proficiency
For this assignment, I addressed the importance of family planning, how access to family planning resources can benefit women’s health, and the importance of breastfeeding. I also talked about different barriers that lower to middle-income countries face when trying to implement nutrition and gender-based violence programs, along with how this impacts the people who seek out these services. This class specifically focuses on how certain health issues affect people in Haiti, allowing us to branch out of French culture and highlight Francophone countries that aren’t often mentioned in other French classes. Personally, I find public health of under-resourced communities extremely fascinating, so having the opportunity to do an assignment in French, which highlights just that, gave me a look into the type of work I'd like to do in the future.
For our final project in the course, we were instructed to create a 10 to 15 minute presentation on a French article of our choice. I chose to present an article about the negligence towards deaf patients within the Canadian Health system. During the fall 2022 semester, I took my second semester of ASL while also taking this class. During the time, we were talking about how deaf and hard of hearing patients tend to be neglected and excluded in the medical field. With that in mind, and me being pretty passionate about the topic, I decided to do some research and focus my presentation on the same issue but within a Francophone country. Although this was my first 10+ presentation solely in French, it was incredibly frightening and I experienced intense anxiety while presenting since I didn’t feel confident in my French skills at the time. However, after giving that presentation and knowing that it’s possible to complete such a feat, I felt much more prepared and comfortable with giving future presentation in French, especially while abroad.