ONE OF my friends just started a semester abroad in Antwerp, Belgium. Aside from getting used to all the nuances of living in a new culture, one of the biggest surprises she found was that "most people don't speak English." While English is the lingua franca or international language of the world, many people still do not speak it well enough to have more than a basic conversation. To give students the tools they need to increase their foreign language acquisition, the University should expand its resources for learning outside of the classroom.
The University offers students a wide range of language classes, including some rare course offerings such as Sanskrit, Bengali, Urdu and Polish along with the more common West European and East Asian languages. The University's language program is particularly impressive when compared to those at other state universities. For example, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) fails to offer classes that University students often take for granted such as Japanese or Ancient Greek. While the University has a wide range of majors and minors in languages, VCU only offers majors in French, German and Spanish.
On a national scale, the University is less impressive. Some of the University's closest competitors offer a wider range of languages. The University of California at Los Angeles' (UCLA) Slavic program offers courses in Czech, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, in addition to Russian and Polish, which are the two Slavic languages taught at the University. The University of California at Berkley currently offers courses in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, while the University of Notre Dame offers a minor in Irish. It is unfortunate that the University has not been able to keep up with many of its national peers in its language course offerings.
As a prestigious institution and one that prides itself on preparing students for an interconnected world, the University needs to provide the language resources to make that goal easier to accomplish. I understand that the University is not able to offer a course in every language, and it is most likely the case that demand for Scandinavian, Celtic and additional language classes might not be high enough to merit offering them. This does not mean, however, that the University should neglect to improve its language programs or increase the resources available for the courses already offered.
In particular, the University needs to expand its resources to include language-learning software. The University has a great number of books written in and about foreign languages, but what good is the Welsh-English dictionary in Alderman's reference section if there are not sufficient resources to learn Welsh? One of the most important factors in second-language acquisition is oral comprehension and practice, neither of which can be obtained simply by reading the dusty books found in the stacks. Software such as Pimsleur, Fluenz and Rosetta Stone have already reshaped language learning by integrating visual, audio and oral components into language acquisition. Although the University does have a language lab, it is focused on exercises from class text books. Adopting additional software resources and making them more widely available would modernize the University's language program and provide resources for students seeking to learn languages not offered by the University.
Another way the University could expand its language resources is by creating a database of language recordings. The University should take advantage of its diverse population of international students, many of whom actually teach introductory language classes. The different language departments could record conversations between native speakers or have them speak spontaneously about a certain topic. This would be an invaluable resource to students, particularly if accompanied by a transcript. Spontaneous speech from a native speaker allows listeners to absorb slang and native speech patterns. It is rare that textbooks fill this gap. Unless you happen to catch the nuances of a language while listening or someone directly tells them to you, it is impossible to learn the linguistic subtleties of a new language. Every French book I have read, for example, states that "I don't know" is "Je ne sais pas" but you would never hear that in France - the French pronounce it "j'sais pas." If students do not have the resources to learn a language as it is spoken, they are wasting their time.
The University would benefit
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