Reply to WVU cutting 32 majors, all foreign languages

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is not just WVU that has been dropping language programs. This has been going on since at least the great recession. My understanding is that fewer students are taking language in HS (and the vast majority of those kids are taking Spanish) and fewer are taking it at the university level. There is just not much demand. People argue that folks need to know these languages for foreign service and military intelligence, but as someone who has experience in both of these areas, the foreign service and the military have their own language training programs. There is of course a real need for spanish speakers in many parts of the country for in health, policing, education type jobs, but, there is really no demand for other languages. My guess is that universities are also having trouble finding qualified professors for these programs.[/quote]

Anyone who learns foreign languages in depth knows that the earlier in life you learn them, the better able you are at becoming fluent, and quicker. Going 4 years of undergraduate without studying a language that you then need to acquire in your mid-twenties or later is not really great planning.

There's a reason small children pick up new languages so quickly and old people do not. You need to take advantage of the plasticity of the brain when it is young. Even if you choose the "wrong" language, having studied it at a younger age, that will help with learning a different one, especially if it's related.

And if WVU is getting rid of foreign language majors, that is a death knell for foreign languages in high schools and earlier in WVA. When there is no one to teach a language it gets cut from the curriculum. That's what happened at my child's high school when the person teaching the language they had been studying decided to leave and the school couldn't find someone to replace him.[/quote]

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