Omaha World Herald, NE
11-15-07
Interest in foreign languages climbing
BY MATTHEW HANSEN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
She already has taken seven semesters of French. She already has decided she
wants to live abroad after she gets her master's degree — maybe Morocco,
maybe Western Europe.
So when Mica Fanning heard the University of Nebraska at Omaha would offer
an Arabic language course for the first time this semester, she thought two words
in plain English: Why not?
"My full desire is to teach in an area that speaks French and Arabic," the UNO
master's student said Wednesday. "So this just makes sense."
Foreign language makes sense to a growing number of college students in
Nebraska and around the country who are adapting to life in an increasingly
multilingual United States and a increasingly global economy, say local college
officials and national experts.
Enrollment in foreign language courses is up nearly 13 percent at U.S.
universities in the past four years, the Modern Language Association of America
announced Tuesday.
In Nebraska, the state's two largest public universities are offering new
languages — Arabic at UNO, and Arabic and Chinese at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln — and hiring new instructors to keep pace with the increased
demand.
The number of students majoring in foreign language has doubled at UNO since
2000. UNL students are breaking enrollment records in classes as diverse as
Spanish, Japanese and Czech.
Foreign language enrollment also is up markedly at the University of Iowa and
Iowa State University, officials at those schools said.
"I think Americans are finally getting it," said Kathy Leonard, associate
chairwoman of Iowa State University's department of world languages and
cultures. "They are realizing how important it is to speak another language. They
are realizing how beneficial this is to them on the job market."
UNL students often now find themselves forced to take three or four foreign
language courses before they can graduate with a business, journalism or
performing arts degree, said Russ Ganim, chairman of UNL's modern languages
department.
Class lectures across the campus focus on globalization, Ganim said. College
leaders and professors push students to study abroad.
"It's a big priority for the university now," he said.
Current events also push students into languages they previously might not have
studied, Leonard said.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, interest in Arabic courses skyrocketed, causing UNL,
UNO and Iowa State to add it as a foreign language.
Learning Chinese increasingly is compelling to college students who now
recognize China as a world power. And Spanish, long the most popular foreign
language, is a practical language to learn as more Spanish-speaking immigrants
settle in the Midlands.
"They are thinking about their futures," said Carolyn Gascoigne, chairwoman of
UNO's department of foreign languages. "They know your starting salary is going
to be higher if you learn a second language."
But politics and practicality don't totally account for the huge spike in interest, the
foreign language experts say. Gascoigne said she now sees students who come
to UNO and enroll in Spanish. Then they take French. Then Italian.
Leonard knows an Iowa State University student who's twice studied abroad,
once in Turkey and once in Norway.
"In my intermediate Spanish class, I ask who's studying abroad, and almost
every student raises their hand," she said. "It's almost a part of their education
now. It's normal."
Fanning may seem exceptional even on today's increasingly global-conscious
college campus. She has lived in France and western Africa.
Now she's struggling through her first semester in Arabic, a language that bears
virtually no resemblance to either of the other two languages she already knows.
Her UNO Arabic class has learned only half the alphabet thus far, and won't start
writing complete sentences until the second semester.
But Fanning's recent trip to Quebec illustrates the simple truth about why she
wants to learn languages other than English. She spoke French on the trip, she
said. So did the Canadians.
"I could understand them. They could understand me."