The link below takes you to the chart that shows the classification of languages by degree of difficulty to learn (taken from Wikipedia .) This list was put together by the U.S. Department of State. There is no category 4 as the previous post referred to. Still, Mandarin and Arabic are in Category 3. It is also fascinating to visit the Department of State's language course offerings . A multitude of them!!
I was recently in contact with Fordham Prep in New York. They have one of the most amazing language departments, offering seven different languages. After inquiring how they distribute their students across languages I found out that they require their students to take one year of Latin or Greek as freshmen and then let them free to take the language they desire. Check out their website , it is inspiring.
I had a discussion with one of my colleagues (Eric Beuzet) the other day regarding the process we will follow to choose our new language. I am not sure if what follows is close to what he was suggesting but this is what I came away with: Could we come up with a rating system that could simplify our task and maybe render the whole process as objective as possible? For example there could be a grading system like this: 3 = important 2 = somewhat important 1 = not important. And the questions could be of the following type: 1) How important is it that the new language belongs to the less difficult languages to learn? 2) How important is it that we cater to the demand of our parents/students? 3) How important is it that we cater to the wishes of the rest of the faculty? 4) How important is it that the language be obvious on the political scene today? 5) How important is it that the new language be obvious on the economic scene today? 6) How important is it that the new lang...
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