Only 7% of College Students Enrolled in a Language?

[FrannieB]

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

Convergence theory

[aokoye]

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

Convergence theory

Care to expand on that so I can figure out whether or not we're agreeing?

edit:

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.

Never mind - we are. If you read anything about the funding of Language Flagship Programs you'll see that.

[Cavesa]

Given all that's been said, I think there is only one question left? Why are the universities doing it?

Why are they making language classes of dubious quality obligatory, if neither the students, nor the university considers them important for those students in question?
Sure, people studying for a language degree are another matter, ok.

If everyone agrees, it is waste of time (universities don't care enough to actually want good results, students don't care enough to actually try and they drop the language as soon as they are allowed to, the society doesn't care as "everybody speaks English"), why is this show still going on?

Is it really such a great way to earn money?
Or are the universities ashamed to admit the truth openly?

So, what would be better? Taking the 7% as a message like "oh, we are such a stupid society not to learn languages more", or actually giving up completely and leaving languages only to people actually interested in them and studying a language degree?

Most countries would have to choose the first option. The US can afford to choose. And I cannot say I'm sure the first is an obvious choice. Perhaps, if fewer people were forced to go to bad classes, there would be more means to teach the few more reasonably. And the overall image of language learning in the US would improve.

[Xenops]

I think this quote from the article sums it up pretty well:

In many cases, as Richard Brecht, who oversees the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, said on Thursday: “It isn’t that people don’t think language education important. It’s that they don’t think it’s possible.”

If you ask the average American about the likelihood of learning a foreign language to fluency, they will say 1. you have to move to the country where it's spoken, or you won't learn it, and 2. only kids can learn languages: adults are too old. Trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to get them to change their eating habits.

Edit: corrected spelling.

[nooj]

I'm going to echo what someone else said earlier in the thread.

The USA is exceptional in that it is separated from other countries by oceans, is geographically massive, already has a de facto lingua franca, and its closest neighbours either speak English majoritarily (Canada) or are not economically impressive enough for its language to be considered prestigious (Mexico). Indeed, as far as I can tell, many Americans think that Spanish is the language of the poor, not the rich, and we know that people learn languages at least in part because of the attitudes they have with respect to the language.

The languages that are already in the USA, such as immigrant languages, are not numerically powerful enough to warrant outsiders from the community to learn them. For example, the Yiddish speaking Orthodox communities. The exception is when the speaker community has the sheer weight of numbers to bring to bear (Miami), and only Spanish has that privilege. And of course native American languages are not even considered relevant for most Americans.

Given these circumstances, it is perfectly understandable why most Americans need no other language than English. The college students that do study a language will be those enrolled into specialist programs. For example, people who study the Middle East, they would need to learn Arabic or Persian etc.

This is in sharp contrast to most countries in Europe, which are geographically close to each other, and none of them are economic superpowers who are self sufficient like the USA. As they rely so much on their neighbours, that is a strong incentive for teaching foreign languages!

Evidence for what I've said above, can be found in what languages are actually studied most often by European students, which tends to be English and French and German, across the board, as Germany and France are the economic powerhouses of Europe. Imagine if Mexico was as economically powerful as Germany for its population size, and Canada was full of French speakers. I bet you that the USA would be in a far more similar situation to Europe. As it is, I don't think Americans need to beat themselves up too much for not being like the Europeans.

The British on the other hand...have no excuse! I would love to see the statistics on A level students and their language situation in the UK.

[Cavesa]

This was already clear.
The question is not why are americans not interested in foreign languages. That's pretty obvious.
But the low quality of most classes, therefore too little value for one's money, that is an extremely important factor too.

People take tons of useless subjects at university (a lot of them obligatorily), so it is pretty interesting to compare languages with those.

Noone questions whether Spanish is more important than physics to a future engineer, the answer is obvious. But out of the classes with low economic value for the students (mostly humanities), why do languages become so controversial every time newspapers have nothing better to write about? Or can you remember any such panic about too few people taking prehistory classes and being bad at it anyways?

[Cavesa]

I think this quote from the article sums it up pretty well:

In many cases, as Richard Brecht, who oversees the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, said on Thursday: “It isn’t that people don’t think language education important. It’s that they don’t think it’s possible.”

If you ask the average American about the likelihood of learning a foreign language to fluency, they will say 1. you have to move to the country where it's spoken, or you won't learn it, and 2. only kids can learn languages: adults are too old. Trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to get them to change their eating habits.

Edit: corrected spelling.

This is not just the US. If you ask an average czech, they'll tell you the same thing. Despite all those differences between being in the US and being native to a tiny country with internationally worthless language. These two points will arise much more often, than you'd expect. But of course, there is the 3rd option here. You can spend lots and lots of time and money on classes, and then you can get quite good, but not too much anyways. Almost thirty years after the revolution, some people are still amazed to see someone with very good level of English.

From what I know about the american students, they are simply different from the rest because of the enormous price of their classes. If I were to spend half a year of my future salary on an obligatory subject I had no need for and the classes would suck anyways, I wouldn't be excited either.

[aokoye]

there is the 3rd option here. You can spend lots and lots of time and money on classes, and then you can get quite good, but not too much anyways. Almost thirty years after the revolution, some people are still amazed to see someone with very good level of English.

This came up in another thread but I think it could bear repeating. Even if we take out English language schools, I suspect you're much more likely to find language schools (teaching languages that are commonly spoken in Europe) that aren't attached to universities in Europe than you are in the US. I think geography has more to do with this than anything.

[IronMike]

So, what would be better? Taking the 7% as a message like "oh, we are such a stupid society not to learn languages more", or actually giving up completely and leaving languages only to people actually interested in them and studying a language degree?

I think what you're seeing with this 7% metric is the people who are actually interested in languages and studying for a language degree, all told.

[galaxyrocker]

If everyone agrees, it is waste of time (universities don't care enough to actually want good results, students don't care enough to actually try and they drop the language as soon as they are allowed to, the society doesn't care as "everybody speaks English"), why is this show still going on?

I don't think anyone's answered this, but it's because American universities like to pretend their goal is to offer a well-rounded education. It's the same reason why they still have required classes like humanities, of (in the case of mine) theology and philosophy (on top of a language requirement). They pride themselves on being a place where individuals go to develop as a whole, instead of just job training. However, I do think we are seeing a trend away from that. My university, for instance, doesn't have the language requirement for engineers or business majors. So I do think we're seeing a trend where universities no longer view themselves as giving students a well-rounded education, but instead provide specialized job training (which saddens me, but that's a different story), and I suspect that we'll slowly start to see language requirements fade out.