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Of all the skills that a person could have in today's globalized world, few serve individuals – and the larger society – as well as knowing how to speak another language.
People who speak another language score higher on tests and think more creatively, have access to a wider variety of jobs, and can more fully enjoy and participate in other cultures or converse with people from diverse backgrounds.
Knowledge of foreign languages is also vital to America's national security and diplomacy. Yet, according to the U.S Government Accountability Office, nearly one in four Foreign Service officers do not meet the language proficiency requirements that they should meet to do their jobs.
Despite all these reasons to learn a foreign language, there has been a steep decline in foreign language instruction in America's colleges and universities. Researchers at the Modern Language Association recently found that colleges lost 651 foreign language programs from 2013 to 2016
The advice to learn foreign languages has been repeated for decades, but how much does it really help native speakers of English, professionally, to learn other languages? Additionally, does the decline of language courses at traditional schools reflect cheaper, better alternatives online?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stretch611 on Thursday February 07 2019, @03:46AM (1 child)
That is true for me. I did take 2 years of French in high school. The number of things I remember in French I can count on one hand.
HOWEVER,
I actually did learn in that class. No joke; I learned more about English in that class then I did in most of my English classes over the years.
Lets face it, I grew up in the US learning English from day one. However, I learned more from family and friends about English than I did in school. I doubt that I am unique in this way. If this wasn't true we would not have regional dialects where everyone uses different terms for soda, pop, or coke as well as hoagie, subs, or grinders. In fact, if we actually listened better in school, we would all be using the same "Queens English" as the brits in spite of their ridiculous terms like loo, lift, and telly. =)
The fact is we generally learn more about English, right or wrong, based on using it with others, not nearly as much from the correct way we are taught in school.
Now, when learning a foreign language you are taught all about sentence structure, irregular verbs, sentence tense, and all the other things that we did not care about learning English. We have to learn it because it is all different for the foreign language and in doing so, we have to learn how to convert back and forth to English. That is why I learned more about English in French class.
In retrospec, I probably would have retained more about French had I actually used it more. I took French thinking that I wasn't too far from Quebec (and undoubtably, many people from Quebec used to visit the NJ shore for Summer) so I figured it would be the most useful. Of course this was only until I went to college in Newark, NJ and had a Spanish bodega 2 doors down from my fraternity house.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 07 2019, @06:44PM
I bet French would have been helpful in understanding Spanish. If you still remembered any.