Foreign Languages

The Washington Post is running an article entitled, "Looking to Adopt a Foreign Tongue." The article states, "...Interest in non-European languages, traditionally less commonly taught in the United States, has been surging, according to survey results released yesterday by the Modern Language Association." The article adds, "More college students across the country are enrolling in language classes, and that is particularly true for Middle Eastern and Asian languages. Chinese language classes jumped 51 percent from 2002 to 2006 to nearly 52,000, and Korean grew 37 percent to more than 7,000. Arabic classes increased more than 126 percent to nearly 24,000."

Read the Article!!

Discussion Starters for Younger Children

• Ask students if they have ever met somebody who spoke a language other than English. (Do any of your students speak a foreign language at home? If so, which language?) Ask students how they think two people might communicate with one another if they don't speak the same language. Would this be a good way to communicate? Why/why not?
  
• Are any of the students in your class learning to speak a foreign language? If so, what language? Do students think it would be hard to learn to speak another language? Why/why not? What kinds of things would a person have to do in order to learn to speak a foreign language? Explain!
• Why do students think that somebody would want to learn to speak a foreign language? Do students think it would be easier for people to be friends and accomplish things together if they could speak the same language? Why/why not? Do students think that people who could not speak the same language would ever be able to get along with one another? Why/why not?
• Have students ever had a hard time understanding somebody even when they spoke the same language? Encourage students to describe this experience. What kinds of things did they do to better understand the other person?
  

Discussion starters for Older Students

• Vocabulary terms to discuss: Obscure; Fractious; Pragmatic; and, Coup.
  
• Ask students if they think it's important for English speakers to also learn how to speak languages from Asia? Why/why not? What questions do students think they should answer when determining whether or not to study a foreign language and what language to specifically study? Why do students think that answers to these questions would
  help them make effective decisions?
  
• Do students think it's more important to learn a foreign language today than it might have been to learn a foreign language twenty five years ago? Why/why not? In what ways has modern technology made it more important to learn foreign languages?
  
• Ask students to consider economic reasons for learning foreign languages. In what ways might learning a foreign language enable individuals generate greater income?