Tuesday, May 5, 2009
In an attempt to encourage students to study less-popular languages, the University will make many more languages capable of fulfilling the CLAS foreign language requirement.
Maggie Childs, chairwoman of the department of East Asian languages and cultures, said that two weeks ago the heads of foreign language departments met to discuss the changing the requirements for students studying obscure languages. They agreed that some languages should be allowed to fulfill the requirement with a four-semester sequence of 3-credit hour courses.
William Tsutsui, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, led the meeting. He said it would be up to individual language departments to determine whether the change could be made. Students studying a foreign language are usually required to take two 5-hour classes and then two 3-hour classes for a total of 16 hours. He said most languages, including Hindi, which will be offered for the first time in Fall 2009, would continue to use this model.
Marc Greenberg, chairman of the department of Slavic languages and literatures, said the University’s new Center for Global and International Studies was trying to find ways to entice students to try learning less-commonly taught languages, LCTLs, available at the University. He said the problem was that students tended to study commonly taught languages rather than try others the University offers. Currently, the University offers more than 30 foreign languages, according to www.languages.ku.edu, including Mongolian; Wolof, the official language of Senegal; Hausa, the official language of Nigeria, and Yiddish.
breakbox1
Languages currently fulfilling the CLAS requirement:
Arabic
Bosnian, Croatian & Serbian
Chinese
Danish
Dutch
French
German
Greek
Hausa
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Kiswahili
Korean
Latin
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
— www.advising.ku.edu
Tsutsui said that graduates with advanced language skills, especially in an LCTL, would have a foot up in the competitive employment market of the 21st century.
“In the competitive global economy we all live in today, students will need something extra to differentiate themselves on the job market,” Tsutsui said. “Languages are a valuable, bankable skill in many sectors of the economy, from finance to law to government and military work.”
Anne Liggett, Portland senior, started studying Uyghur (ooi-ghur), which is spoken in central Asia, in Fall 2007. She said that in her first year there were two students and another student auditing, but both her classmates have graduated since.
“There are not very many schools across the country that offer Uyghur, while most schools teach Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, so I wanted to take advantage of it here,” Liggett said. “And to be taught by a native speaker is a rare blessing.”
Liggett said there were few students studying obscure languages, which made for a more individualized learning experience.
“There aren’t very many classes where you can get one-on-one instruction,” Liggett said. “On the other hand, we always love to have more people study the language. Even if the language seems obscure to us, they are the heart language of millions of people.”
Zach Holden, Topeka senior, was first exposed to Tibetan while teaching English in Nepal and India last year. He decided to study the language this semester. There is only one other student in his class. He said he thought there should be more reasons for learning a language than the practicality of international economics.
“By exposing yourself to an exotic language you expose yourself to a new way of seeing the world,” Holden said. “I believe this is critically important for everyone, as it reduces ethnocentrism, fear and bigotry.”
Holden said that as an anthropology major, he believed that cultural preservation was very important. He said that 40 years ago there were more than 6,000 languages spoken; now only about 3,000 of those are being passed on. Diversity of language and culture is critical to humanity’s survival as a species, Holden said.
“Keeping small languages and cultures alive should be part of the global agenda as we move into the 21st century,” Holden said.
— — Edited by Melissa Johnson
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