Only 7% of College Students Enrolled in a Language?

[Cavesa]

7% seems a bit weird, but I wouldn't be surprised. The US universities are known to be bad at languages. I remember seeing a nice example in France: a young woman preparing for a career of a maths and French teacher, who definitely wouldn't even get accepted to such a degree in my country (and the standards for teaching degrees are pretty low). And we hear of it pretty often.

Why wouldn't she have been able to get such a degree your country? Was it that her French and Maths skills were so poor?

Her French skills, I know nothing about her maths.

Around here, B2 tends to be the demanded entry level to study popular languages, B1 at some very remote universities without much of a reputation (I have a backup plan requiring B1 German ). Of course the teaching degrees are much less difficult than the philology or translation ones (I looked at the plans rather carefully), but the competition is still big. Faculties offering degrees in English, German, French, or Spanish can choose their students from a large crowd. The less popular languages have different entry requirements of course.

That girl, who was supposed to teach French in two or three years, had horrible pronunciation with very strong accent. Her grammar and vocabulary allowed her to talk but not with too much nuance or detail. Given my experience with the French exams, I doubt she could pass DELF B2 even with a better accent. With this accent, no chance.

She could have improved in France a lot, but it is rather sad she would have needed a few years at university and an Erasmus to reach what is considered the entry level here.

[FrannieB]

If you take 4 years of lang. in highschool you can often test out of the college lang. requirement which many students do.

[aokoye]

Around here, B2 tends to be the demanded entry level to study popular languages, B1 at some very remote universities without much of a reputation (I have a backup plan requiring B1 German ). Of course the teaching degrees are much less difficult than the philology or translation ones (I looked at the plans rather carefully), but the competition is still big. Faculties offering degrees in English, German, French, or Spanish can choose their students from a large crowd. The less popular languages have different entry requirements of course.

That girl, who was supposed to teach French in two or three years, had horrible pronunciation with very strong accent. Her grammar and vocabulary allowed her to talk but not with too much nuance or detail. Given my experience with the French exams, I doubt she could pass DELF B2 even with a better accent. With this accent, no chance.

She could have improved in France a lot, but it is rather sad she would have needed a few years at university and an Erasmus to reach what is considered the entry level here.

It seems like the real issue with the person in your example is how much French she learned prior to going to college. I'm assuming that when you said "B2 tends to be the demand entry level to study popular languages" you meant at the bachelors level no? If not then yeah, that's an issue of her college/university education.
Quite sadly, but not surprisingly, my university only goes up to B2 in German classes. I suspect there are higher equivalent levels for French and Spanish and I know there are for Russian. Mildly related, most US institutions don't use the CEFR system so trying to search for levels in relation to that in the US is hard. A few years ago an equivalency table got posted that compared CEFR with ACTFL levels, but that's pretty new.

[zenmonkey]

If you take 4 years of lang. in highschool you can often test out of the college lang. requirement which many students do.

I'm guessing some of that is going on.
My university required all students to pass the equivalent of a B1 language level.

30-45% of students came in with that in their pocket.

Now, a close friend that is probably the smartest person I've met (he's also an MD-PhD-JDE) failed French and got sent back home for a year to get his French done before he could come back to school.

I'd challenge that 7% - having said that, so many people in the US then go work and have little use for the language they've learned. "Oh, I studied xxx in college/high school. I don't remember much," is pretty standard.

[Seneca]

At my (American) university, the language requirements worked out like this:

Bachelor of Arts required at least 4 semesters of language. More if you were majoring in a language or double majoring.

Bachelor of Science required no language, but required math to a certain level instead. That level was determined by your specific major.

Bachelor of General Studies was the joke degree that had no language requirement and, if I recall correctly, no math beyond maybe College Algebra, if that. It was very rare anyone majored in this.

[Fortheo]

Since at least one or two courses of a language are required for a bachelor's degree (in my state) , I don't see how they are getting 7%. And it's not like you stay enrolled in that course all how many years of college so maybe when they did the study there was only 7% but if you see how many college student took a language course, it would be much higher.

That didn't sound right to me either, as even my secluded state of Idaho requires language courses for a degree. I looked on the original report: https://apps.mla.org/pdf/06enrollmentsurvey_final.pdf

And a key graph is shown here:



Note the words: "(Excluding Enrollments in 2-Year Colleges)". This is key to me: many students, as a method to save cash in college, go to a community college for their first two years, and there take of their general courses before they transfer to a four-year university. Many of them would also take their language courses at this time, and would not count in the survey's values.

That is what I did. Took Spanish 1 online (easy A) before transferring to a four year college.

It's similar here in that foreign language studies are a requirement for practically any major in a state school, but a lot of kids are allowed to transfer foreign language credits from high-school, thus that part of their requirements for their degree is already completed.

[Cavesa]

If you take 4 years of lang. in highschool you can often test out of the college lang. requirement which many students do.

It seems like the real issue with the person in your example is how much French she learned prior to going to college. I'm assuming that when you said "B2 tends to be the demand entry level to study popular languages" you meant at the bachelors level no? If not then yeah, that's an issue of her college/university education.
Quite sadly, but not surprisingly, my university only goes up to B2 in German classes. I suspect there are higher equivalent levels for French and Spanish and I know there are for Russian. Mildly related, most US institutions don't use the CEFR system so trying to search for levels in relation to that in the US is hard. A few years ago an equivalency table got posted that compared CEFR with ACTFL levels, but that's pretty new.

Of course the issue is how much she had learnt prior to going to college. It should be impossible to get to the college language degree without prior knowledge. I personally think the whole phenomenon of Language 101 classes for beginners at the US universities is a huuuge waste of money. And if a university only goes to B2 German, that is laughable, no offence to you meant.

Yes, it can be expected from learners of less common languages to not have prior knowledge (you don't need it here for many languages either, but you usually have a different and common language as a requirement), but one would hope college would expand on already existing interest in the subject. You don't start college level math or physics classes without any prior knowledge, do you?

As a result, I highly doubt such a student with 0 entry knowledge can leave college with C1 or C2. And people without such a level should never teach. Not in any setting more official then homework help and practice between classmates.

[aokoye]

Of course the issue is how much she had learnt prior to going to college. It should be impossible to get to the college language degree without prior knowledge. I personally think the whole phenomenon of Language 101 classes for beginners at the US universities is a huuuge waste of money. And if a university only goes to B2 German, that is laughable, no offence to you meant.

Yes, it can be expected from learners of less common languages to not have prior knowledge (you don't need it here for many languages either, but you usually have a different and common language as a requirement), but one would hope college would expand on already existing interest in the subject. You don't start college level math or physics classes without any prior knowledge, do you?

As a result, I highly doubt such a student with 0 entry knowledge can leave college with C1 or C2. And people without such a level should never teach. Not in any setting more official then homework help and practice between classmates.

None taken - I think the quality of language education at most public schools in the US is dismal but I think you know that. I also have a lot to say about my university's German dept but I will leave that for a potential PM. That said, given that it makes total sense why there are 101 classes at US colleges because it's pretty clear that a lot of people aren't going to be learning anything other than Spanish or French elsewhere. German is going the by way side in a lot of high schools from what I can tell, Italian as well. Mandarin, Japanese, and ASL are on the rise I want to say, but I haven't looked at statistics for US high school language classes in awhile.

As I've also said in the past, you can get from 0 to C1 or C2 in the span of four to five years of university (with university here normally being four years) but it takes a lot of work. The Language Flagship Programs are a really good example of that. They, quite logically, don't use the CEFR framework rather they use the ILR and graduates are expected to leave with an ILR 3 rating which, according to wikipedia, is C1. That said, language flagship isn't the norm and it is only offered in languages that the government finds "critical". That said the flagship programs involve a lot more than occasional homework and talking to other students.

Outside of Flagship programs, I think the logical way for a student in the US to reach C1 from 0 by the time they graduate is as follows:
Freshman year: take first year language classes - if you're lucky you'll find an accelerated first year - do that
Summer between Freshman and Sophomore years: take 2nd year classes (note - the summer language courses at my university fill up)
Sophomore year: Third year classes
Summer between: go to a domestic immersion program (of which there are many depending on the language) or a summer international immersion program
Junior year: Study abroad
Senior year: 400 level classes

[FrannieB]

Of course the issue is how much she had learnt prior to going to college. It should be impossible to get to the college language degree without prior knowledge. I personally think the whole phenomenon of Language 101 classes for beginners at the US universities is a huuuge waste of money. And if a university only goes to B2 German, that is laughable, no offence to you meant.

So brilliantly said -
A. 101 language classes are a waste, if you have taken Spanish in HS and you are paying for your degree and the Lang. requirement does not go towards your major - Most students with any Spanish(or other lang) will opt out of the Language at College. I myself did this. I only needed to take 1 semester and they started everyone at 101, it was a waste of my time and is the reason I dropped Spanish is College. Plus I think the teacher sucked big time and I was an idiot and didn't understand the impact of knowing a second language.

At the same time as I have done my studies abroad I have run into college seniors who are majoring in Spanish and lets just say I have felt they wasted their money. I by no means an fluent and in most cases was better at the language then them. Oh they had grammar skills but conversation skills and understanding the locals was not there.

The reality is the United States is a monolingual society and does not value being bilingual or more. Veering off slightly
Critical Race Theory states that unless the dominate culture views "it" as resource to make life easier "it" is something that is not valued.
It being something not represented in the dominate culture.
This is known as interest convergence - only when a dominate culture sees and understands that there is something in it for them will being a bilingual society be embraced and students understand the value of language.

You must understand in the United States educational system being a bilingual student is still seen as a deficit that will not benefit you in the future. Your future is determined by you ability to be monolingual.

Okay I will step down of my soap box about language.

[aokoye]

The reality is the United States is a monolingual society and does not value being bilingual or more. Veering off slightly
Critical Race Theory states that unless the dominate culture views "it" as resource to make life easier "it" is something that is not valued.
It being something not represented in the dominate culture.
This is known as interest convergence - only when a dominate culture sees and understands that there is something in it for them will being a bilingual society be embraced and students understand the value of language.

You must understand in the United States educational system being a bilingual student is still seen as a deficit that will not benefit you in the future. Your future is determined by you ability to be monolingual.

Okay I will step down of my soap box about language.

In terms of policy the US is monolingual, but in practice I don't think I can agree with that. I do think that the US is actually rather good at teaching foreign languages when the government deems those languages useful, though even then most of the money going towards that ends up being spent on adults as opposed to children (for somewhat logical reasons when you look at why the US considers X languages to be important and where that funding is coming from).

I do agree that bilingual education (where "bilingual education" means teaching students the language of wider communication in the region) in the US is largely subtractive, though that isn't unique to the US.