When compared to parts of Europe and Asia, the United States is lacking in the linguistics department. Children who grow up in these other parts of the world are exposed to two, sometimes even three, languages starting at a young age. As a result, many universities in the United States now require a certain number of foreign language courses to be completed before graduation.
The University of Mississippi is just one university to implement these requirements. Felice Coles, associate professor of Spanish and linguistics, supports the new requirements with the belief that they will help students compete on a global scale.
“In the past our idea has been that we are all American and should all speak American English,” Coles said. “Now we are realizing that we can’t remain in that mindset, because if we want to compete in the global market we must learn as many languages as we can.”
The languages the university offers include Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Many of these language programs have existed for a long time. For example, the Russian program has been around for 55 years and is one of the oldest programs at Ole Miss.
“The program started the year Sputnik was released,” said Donald Dyer, chair of the modern languages department and former Russian professor. “A lot of American universities wanted to offer Russian because they believed it would be beneficial for the students to speak the language of the enemy.”
The Japanese program has also been taught at the university for quite some time — about 25 years, Arabic has been taught for five years, and the Korean program was just introduced in the 2011-12 school year.
The Chinese program was started 15 years ago. However, the program did not become popular until the Chinese Flagship program was introduced in 2003. According to the university’s Chinese Flagship website, Ole Miss is one of six Flagship centers around the country and has a five-year undergraduate program. Jordan Hayward, sophomore international studies major and Chinese Flagship student, has a love-hate relationship with the language.
“Learning Chinese is one of the hardest things I have ever done,” Hayward said. “But it is also one of the most rewarding things and has exceeded any expectations I could have possibly had.”
Hayward will be studying in China for the first time this summer. The Chinese Flagship program was not in Hayward’s initial plan. It was her father, who she calls a global businessman, who convinced her to take it up.
“My father recommended Chinese because it has such a large job market attached to it,” Hayward said. “Knowing Chinese, or any critical language, makes you extremely marketable whether you work for the government as an analyst or even just as a translator in New York.”
The university is seeing a steady increase of students signing up to study the critical languages. According to the Flagship website, languages are classified as critical by the United States government when the national need for trained speakers in those languages exceeds the number of bilingual speakers available.
The Chinese program may be the most rapidly growing program at the university. In the 2004-05 school year, only 84 students were enrolled in the program. In the 2012-13 school-year, there were 274 students enrolled, a 226 percent increase.
“China’s long history, rich culture, and unique orthography fascinate many students and lead them to the program,” said Yi Lin, assistant professor of Chinese. “It wasn’t long ago when Chinese was regarded as a less commonly taught language.”
While critical language programs are on the rise, the Spanish program continues to recruit the most students. Some argue that students migrate toward Spanish because it is familiar.
“Spanish is the language most offered in our high schools,” Coles said. “Students who feel pressure to excel in college may stick to Spanish because they’ve had previous exposure.”
When implementing new language programs into the curriculum, the modern language department begins with a pilot class. If a program becomes interested in the language, the modern language department sets up a meeting to discuss co-funding an instructor.
It did not take long for the Korean program to become a regular language course at the university. Both the Croft Institute and Chancellor Dan Jones showed an interest in the program right away. The program has undergone a slow but steady increase with 38 students enrolled for the 2012-13 school year, a 90 percent increase from the 12 enrolled at the program’s start.
The department has also been offering Swahili now for a year and a half. Two groups of students, those in the African-American Department and students studying linguistics, have shown an interest in the program.
“A graduate student usually teaches the pilot class long enough for it to fulfill language requirements for degree programs,” Dyer said. “We try to introduce these new languages in a way that they can build momentum.”
Studies are being conducted to show potential correlation between advanced cognition and those who are multilingual. According to a New York Times debate, “neuroscience is beginning to show that the brains of bilinguals may have advantages in what will matter most in the global era; managing complexity, rational planning and meta-cognition.”
Dyer is an advocate for cognition and language learning being related in some ways. He says learning languages makes you better at learning because it employs a large number of different cognitive devices at one time. Four of these devices are memorization, practice, problem solving and rule learning.
Other linguistics professors agree with Dyer, including Felice Coles. Coles says that language learning helps students to not only develop new perspectives and a larger vocabulary, but also to recognize new patterns.
“Linguistics is a science and once you start investigating structures and patterns of language, you begin a journey to find a simple, elegant and logical explanation for each pattern,” Coles said. “It is just another method of analysis, which helps to train your brain.”
Spanish is a more straight-forward translation from Latin and uses the Roman alphabet. This comforts some students, while others choose to challenge themselves by studying a non-Romance language. Hayward recognizes the benefits of studying a language without the comfort of the Roman alphabet.
“Learning any new language, especially one that requires a new alphabet, is scary,” Hayward said. “But it helps you to improve your memorization skills, listening skills, and can help you to develop and appreciate a discipline you never knew you had.”
Lawrence Summers, an economist interviewed by The New York Times, is under the impression that a translator is all anyone needs to be successful in the international market. Dyer disagrees because translators cannot understand context and the expressions that are imperative in language.
“They have some functionality, but they can’t be trusted to translate accurately,” Dyer said.
He also stresses that students who want to become proficient in new languages should take the courses with a live professor and not online.
“You need to study with a teacher so that they can look you in the eyes and see your body language,” Dyer said. “It may be uncomfortable at first, but you have to reach a level of discomfort before you can become comfortable with a language.”
However, he does understand that students aren’t dedicated to their foreign language courses because they have other classes. Dyer sees the stress firsthand, as his daughter is in the fourth level of Chinese.
“I can see that it is killing her to spend the time that she needs to on her Chinese because she’s also got chemical engineering and physics,” he said. “It is easy to mess up this kind of learning because students get too little out of it.”
So should the United States expose their students to new languages at a younger age? There are arguments for and against these early language courses. Some American high schools have already begun to expose their young students to new languages.
“There’s a primary school in the Delta that has the first emerging Spanish program,” Dyer said. “They start the program in kindergarten and it is amazing to sit in on those classes.”
Spanish is not the only language being offered to students prior to college. States such as California and Ohio have been offering Chinese in their schools for quite some time. Next year, four high schools in Mississippi will also begin offering Chinese.
Whether the reason is to develop better learning skills or to be able to compete internationally, learning new languages is becoming more popular in the United States. Current university students think it is time the U.S. made a move.
“You can walk around any campus and meet international students who speak several languages, including critical ones, fluently,” Hayward said. “This is an international trend that the U.S. is finally starting to follow because we recognize that this time we must conform in order to be competitive in the current and emerging international job market that we can no longer avoid.”
