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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: 2) by eravnrekaree on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:59PM (1 child)
You can get a language learning kit over the counter for $100 and that you can use any time you want, has multimedia and software, and works great, being developed with the best scientific research. They are professional productions, and having thousands of customers, they can spend more money on research to make the delivery and quality as perfect as it can be. It works as well as any class, if not better. You can learn at your own pace and on your own schedule and come back to it any time you want because its always there.
You don't need to spend $300 on a language class that's only a few hours long. If anything is obsolete and antiquated, its spending thousands of dollars to take courses at a college. With multimedia, more information and knowledge can be distributed to more people cheaply and efficiently. This cheaper mode of education through self study and multimedia lowers the cost of education and increases upward mobility by removing more barriers to success. At many colleges, college dropout rates are over 60%, while professors enjoy posh tenured jobs students struggle to feed themselves after paying massive tuiton fees, often working second third or fourth jobs to try to make ends meet. The costs of college are enormous with trillions of dollars of student debt in the US. Its one of the most inefficient forms of educating people and the fact is, the experience with language learning and the success with scientifically developed multimedia language courses that cost a fraction of college courses, shows that an self study program, followed by an apprenticeship can be far more cost effective for many jobs.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 07 2019, @07:59PM
I've always found it helpful to have a live teacher to discuss what I'm learning with. And, even more important, to give me regular paced homework assignments to do. Without that scheduling, my mind tends to wander off and not work on learning what I set out to learn.