Towards a new language . . . and beyond . . .

This morning I was reminded how important it is to allot time for professional discussion. Over coffee, I had an impromptu five-minute conversation with our illustrious Craig Bouma, Science department chair (You know, the guy who was on NPR ). It was very pleasant and thought provoking. After his usual reprimand regarding my reckless (bike) riding, I asked him what he thought about the future of the Foreign Language Department. Since he did not have any answer he asked me questions (what a Socratic!) : -What do you want to accomplish? Mastery or give students a taste for different things that they may pursue later in college? -What do your paying customers want? How do you balance what they want and what you know is best as a professional? -What do other department chairs recommend? (Although Craig proposed some answers, I'll leave it at that and let you chime in with your own take on it.)

An ALTA Language Services write-up of the most popular foreign languages and foreign language enrollment in U.S. schools. Click here to read it.

Preface: This is a conversation I had over the weekend that I thought was very interesting. I am not saying this is the right choice for Loyola, just sharing one school's experience. One of the many language options on the long list of "considered languages" was American Sign Language (ASL). Which I admittedly never looked at closely or seriously considered since it had received lower support in terms of all our polling, though it did get some votes. Over the weekend I had lunch with a grad school friend who teaches Spanish at a school in Irvine and of course the first thing I asked her was "What languages do you offer? and how do you decide which student gets which language?". They currently offer 3 languages: Spanish, French, ASL. ASL was a new program (within the past 3-5 years). I asked how they had come to that decision. Several years back a female student severely struggled with Spanish and ultimately failed out of the course. She had to attend communit...

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.

Most Widely Spoken Languages in Los Angeles County (US Census 2000) Spanish 4,ooo,ooo Chinese 390,000 Tagalog 196,000 Korean 165,000 Armenian 138,000 Vietnamese 72,000 Persian 68,000 Japanese 60,000 Russian 44,000 French 39,000 Arabic 37,000

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...