Grant gives University an edge in critical languages

Students offered intensive language classes, immersion experience this summer

Jessica Neville

Science & Tech Editor

The Department of Foreign Languages is providing an opportunity for students to take intensive six-week language courses during summer sessions. The program is made possible by a three-year grant from the National Security Education Program for $750,000.

Program Director Dwight Stephens said the purpose of this program is to make the University a hub for the state of North Carolina and the nation for critical language immersion. The languages being offered this summer through the grant are Persian, Arabic and Urdu.

“These languages have been selected by the U.S. State Department as being critical to both world security and world economic stability,” Stephens said. “They are languages concentrated in the Middle East, an area which the U.S. has many attachments to.”

Stephens said there are numerous advantages students could receive by taking these courses.

“There are enormous career advantages that being fluent in one of these languages could provide,” Stephens said. “Lots of people know Spanish, but not many know middle eastern languages.”

Careers in foreign-service, business, technology, and the state department are all fields interested in people who know these languages, according to Stephens. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and is also spoken in India, one of the fastest growing nations in the world.

The intensive classes sponsored by the grant give students eight hours of credit for two levels of a language in six weeks. The classes meet from May 17 to June 30 five days a week for five and a half hours per day.

“We want to make the language real to our students by putting them in authentic situations with native speakers,” Stephens said. “The program includes a structured grammatical session in the morning and a more relaxed, culturally-concentrated lesson in the afternoon.”

Army ROTC MS I Director Justin Sisneros helps to coordinate the scholarships for ROTC students to take these summer classes. He said these languages are important for students planning careers in the military because they need to learn the language and culture of the areas of the world they will be working in. “Whether we have to work with or against these nations in the future, it is always beneficial to have experience with the culture,” Sisneros said.

Johnathan Lanahan, a cadet in Army ROTC and senior in civil engineering, is applying for an ROTC scholarship to take Urdu this summer.

“I went on a trip to India through ROTC over Christmas break, and it was a life-changing experience,” Lanahan said. “The trip influenced me to want to learn Urdu, because it is spoken in India as well as many Middle Eastern countries. It would help me a lot in my military career.”

While many scholarships are available from the grant money for ROTC students interested in taking these classes, they are available for all students to take. “The classes are for everybody; they have no military content or teaching,” Stephens said. “We hope to have students from all over the U.S. and especially North Carolina participate.”

In addition to the critical languages classes, the Department of Foreign Languages is also offering intensive courses in Spanish and French to interested students. Stephens said the program hopes to add Chinese and Russian next summer through the grant.

Michele Magill, an associate professor of French, will be teaching the French intensive class this summer. The French and Spanish classes, which are not sponsored by the grant but only by the Department of Foreign Language, are slightly different than the critical languages.

“The French intensive course allows a student to receive credit for two language classes or six credit hours in one summer session,” Magill said. “Students have class five days a week, for three hours a day, plus homework.”

According to Magill, the intensive classes are very effective because of the repetition and focus put on the language.

“My students learn just as much if not more in five weeks than they do in two classes a week over the course of a year,” Magill said. “The focus is on completely immersing the student in French language and culture.”

Magill said she will have an e-book to go with her class to give the students more practice, and she hopes to have a teaching assistant. She said she wants to make the class interactive.

Students should go to http://gold.chass.ncsu.edu for more course and registration information, language learning pages, country and culture pages, and videos.