Ever Wonder Why There’s a Language Requirement?

Here are some reasons why:

Second language learning as one of the cornerstones of a liberal education:

• The American Council on Education have called on American educators “to make foreign language competence an integral part of a college education,” and arguing that “every baccalaureate holder should be competent in a second language.”
• The Association of American Colleges and Universities echoes this call by including the ability to communicate effectively in a second language as one of the four fundamental skills that define “empowered learners.”

Because language shapes both how we understand and how we negotiate our world, learning a second language produces a deep awareness of difference (linguistic and cultural) while at the same time providing bridges to move across those differences. Informed respect for other cultures, tolerance, cosmopolitanism, self-awareness, and flexibility are the hallmarks of a liberal education, and the study of foreign languages fosters precisely these capacities.

Five Rationale

1. Communication

• Competence in a foreign language is an important social skill.

• The need to communicate with the many others who speak languages other than English is an important reason for learning foreign languages.

• Language study allows us to communicate effectively in non-English speaking countries.

• One need not travel abroad, however, in order to be confronted with the need to communicate in a language other than English: for example, doctors and social workers in many American communities will need Spanish, Arabic, or Chinese.

2. Personal Growth & Transformation

• Language learning forces us to step out of the air-conditioned tour bus and into the actual climate of a location. Language learning can be unsettling: to be deprived of the familiar means by which we make ourselves known not only affords us a taste of the struggles that many in the world experience in trying to speak English; it also removes us from an all-too-comfortable position of judging the world at a distance.

• The process of opening up one’s identity can also be satisfying in ways that are deeply personal. In many cases, learning a foreign language allows students to communicate with their parents and grandparents in their own first languages, and to gain a fuller understanding of a shared heritage. Speaking and writing a foreign language is at every level a form of creative expression. Thus the results of a survey of graduating seniors by Harvard University should come as no surprise: language courses consistently ranked among students’ most significant and satisfying undergraduate experiences.

• Even partial knowledge of a foreign language broadens intellectual horizons, diversifies ways of thinking, heightens sensitivity, and enriches self-understanding: it gives us new eyes that open up new worlds. Learning another culture in depth through study of its language also provides a unique platform from which we are able to gain perspective on our own culture and language specifically, and on the myriad ways in which language shapes thought, culture, and identity generally.

• Language learning has an important role to play in the processes of personal growth that liberal education should seek to foster.

3. Diversity & Tolerance

• Proficiency in a foreign language requires and enables proficiency in cross-cultural thinking: the “language requirement” is inherently a language and culture requirement. Natural languages are not abstract or arbitrary constructs but the central and defining media of specific peoples and cultures. There is no understanding of another people that approaches the understanding provided by fluency in their language.

• Language learning challenges us to abandon our own deeply ingrained structures -- grammatical, semantic, psychological, cultural -- and cross over into new ones. It allows us to escape the monolingual trap of translating all experience into our own terms. Because language skills are seated at the level of habit, the conscious practice of new cultural habits required by language learning is especially effective in combating unconscious or semi-conscious prejudices. Study of a foreign language provides not only conceptual insights, but also ongoing, transforming practice in openness, flexibility, diversity, and tolerance.

• The expectation that others will conform to our language and culture without reciprocation can foster resentment; learning others’ languages can only help to create bonds of trust, reconciliation, and understanding. Recent events have underscored the extent to which such bonds are still lacking.

• We rightly cherish diversity as a high institutional ideal. An important dimension of diversity is a person’s ability to understand national and global events from multiple perspectives. Few academic pursuits are better suited to developing this capacity than language learning.

• Language learning is a crucial means of fostering diversity.

4. Globalization and Internationalization

• The UM President’s Commission on the Undergraduate Experience issued a report recommending that “the University needs to respond to the opportunity and the challenge of globalism” in a world “where interconnections are increasingly complex and fluid, and where students are more likely to traverse natural and cultural boundaries in their future careers.” In light of these challenges, the Commission has laid down as a benchmark the ideal “that U-M students should graduate with enough knowledge about at least one culture abroad that they can be said to have an informed respect for it.”

• As we look to the future, the University of Michigan should seek to foster and prepare students for the new internationalism that has enveloped every aspect of our lives. There is every indication that this trend will only accelerate in the face of transnational movements of large populations, the ongoing globalization of the world’s economies, and the emergence of strong regional and global networks, institutions, and alliances.

• The growing dominance of English does not obviate the need for an informed response to globalization, but rather reinforces it: students are increasingly likely to interact with individuals whose perspective on the world was formed through a different language, and the pervasiveness of English masks these real differences . It is increasingly vital that the people of Michigan and the United States be educated in a way that enables real dialogue across the myriad local differences that make up our globalizing world.

• Language study is crucial to the realization of globalization’s most promising potential: the creation of new, transnational cultures of partnership, reciprocity. As Chinese Ambassador to the United States Yang Jiechi has claimed, “The bridge of understanding and friendship cannot be built without language.”

• “Our goal is to enable our students to think and act effectively as global citizens, who take responsibility and action in relation to both the opportunities of globalization and its adverse effects.” From Dean Shirley Neuman’s “Charge to the Committee on Internationalization in Undergraduate Education”

• Becoming a “global citizen” requires active preparation, engagement, and above all awareness that genuine globalization (as opposed to mere exploitation) must always be a two-way street. The promise of globalization can be fulfilled only through the development of “informed respect” for other cultures. Language maps the inside of culture; thus, language learning is uniquely suited to foster “informed respect.” Globalization is a fact, but understanding of other cultures is not therefore a given. Indeed, globalization challenges us all to change and grow.

• Command of a second language is also a highly marketable skill that opens the door to a wealth of professional opportunities. According to The Wall Street Journal, “demand for multilingual workers is rising fast,” and there is a “supply and demand mismatch at middle and upper management for employees who can speak a second language.” In a recent survey of businesses, over 80% said they would place a greater emphasis on “international competence” in hiring and training over the next decade.

• Success in a globalized economy depends on our ability to establish relationships based on common experiences, but also on respect for local cultures, customs, and work ethics. Moreover, monolingual Americans will inevitably find themselves at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis others with a wider set of skills. For example, they will be dependent on intermediaries for access to primary sources and other information flows, and they will continuously be tempted to assume that everything of importance has already been translated into English, when this is not always the case.

• Knowledge of foreign languages is also crucial to security and diplomacy. Knowledge of foreign languages allows us to respond quickly and effectively in times of crisis.

• The demands of public service are changing rapidly as it confronts new notions of sovereignty, new obligations under international agreements, and the complexity of issues such as human rights, ecology, and disease, that refuse to respect national boundaries.

• We are all increasingly challenged to become citizens of the world: if we are to meet that responsibility, it is crucial that we gain the deepest possible insight into other cultures through study of their languages.

5. Academics

• Language learning enhances a wide range of analytic, interpretive, and critical skills. Beyond the ability to use a specific tongue, language learning offers more general benefits that are fully consonant with the highest goals of a liberal education.

• From a renewed appreciation of gestures to picking up points of English grammar never mastered in grade school, language classes make us turn our attention to things we risk taking for granted. Becoming a more self-aware language user means becoming a better communicator in all languages, someone quicker to seize the importance of finding the right turn of phrase in a memo or discovering the appropriate response in a situation demanding etiquette and tact.

• By studying foreign languages, one learns that no communication is ever totally transparent or free from potential misunderstanding; that communication always requires effort, precision, and care. Language learning opens the door to a deep literacy that is more fully aware of the many ways in which language shapes thought, culture, and identity.

• Early fulfillment of the language requirement makes it possible to major or minor in a language, but it also fulfills an all-important prerequisite for the kind of direct and meaningful engagement implied by ‘advanced work’ in a discipline. Natural scientists and social scientists need strong language skills in order to perform field work. Humanists and social scientists need these skills to access untranslated archives. Students with strong language skills can access both primary and secondary sources in the original across a wide array of subjects. They are better able to collaborate with their teachers on research projects, exploit the rich holdings of the University’s libraries, and benefit from the cosmopolitanism of a faculty and student body drawn from all over the world. The language requirement positions students to make fullest use of our extraordinary institutional resources.

• Those who have mastered the nuances of a second language are keenly aware how much gets “lost in translation,” and that what is lost is often the most crucial point. They can more easily situate discrete information within its full cultural context. They can appreciate fully the beauty, subtlety, and power of great literature. In a wide variety of professional situations, they are empowered to break free from ‘handlers’ and become players.

Want to know more??
Go to The Report of the LSA Foreign Language Review Committee, June 2004; click here