US: Language Boom

[Francis Hult]

News at Northeastern

 

Language boom

 

On a train headed for the U.S. State Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., third-year Northeastern student Drew McConnell overheard a group of Egyptian journalists bantering back and forth in Arabic.

 

McConnell, an international affairs and political science dual major, jumped right into the conversation, having spent three semesters learning Arabic at Northeastern and another two months on a language-based Dialogues of Civilization program to Egypt.

 

"We talked about Arab-American and Egyptian-American relations," McConnell said, adding that his conversation with the visiting journalists became a focus of the scribes' article on their trip to the United States. "We talked at a level that was higher than I was used to, but I am confident enough to approach people and know they will understand me and will want to engage me in conversation as much as I want to engage them."

 

For McConnell and thousands of other students at Northeastern, learning how to speak a foreign language has become as important as studying the introductory courses in their majors. This fall, 1,450 students are taking at least one of 13 language courses, including Swahili, Northeastern's latest addition to its language menu. Since the creation of the World Languages Center in 2007, the University has set new enrollment records in languages each semester.

 

Full story:

http://www.northeastern.edu/news/stories/2009/11/foreignlanguageboom.html

_______________________________________________
Edling mailing list
Edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu
https://lists.sis.utsa.edu/mailman/listinfo/edling
List Manager: Francis M. Hult