As a language instruction at Luther, I think it's really important that all of my students
understand all of the opportunities that they can have through language
and it can be watching a movie that they think is really interesting
or reading a novel that they really enjoy but reading it
in the original language or watching
the movie in the original language
makes it so much more exciting and so
much more fulfilling.
There are several reasons why I think
learning a language at Luther College
is really important.
I think that you need to be able to put your mind in another person's mind and one of
the ways to do that
is to learn a foreign language. usually
think about the language is connected to
a country in being able to
communicate with the people coming from
that country but
there's more to language learning. One thing that we know
that if you are engaged with a different set of symbols of different language system
you also training different
cognitive skills. You also
engaged with a different way of thinking
in expanding our way of
of seeing the world
All semester of my junior year I studied abroad in Vine del Mar, Chile
and I lived with a host family, I took
classes at the university there
and really because of the Spanish skills I developed
at college I was able to grasp the language
pretty quickly
and to really understand Chilean culture at a much
deeper level than I would have been able to had I not spoken a language
We have classes at Luther
that tried to course focus on the culture study
and language study and literature. But we also have courses
for instance in French we have a business course
We go to a french-speaking country for a semester and students do
internships and so they learned about
their
language and the language they will need
in
whichever line of work they want to
work in eventually.
Everybody should be just absolutely
amazed at this thing we do called
language because it's the most
complicated system of communication
that we know of
Linguistics is the study of that
system
linguistics also helps us understand how
society works
and how cultures differ and
express their beliefs. So these are the
kinds of things that we really liked to
delve into
There's a lot of numbers and data that gets thrown around when you talk about languages.
But when that often comes around is that there's
actually 50 percent
50 percent more likely to get hired
as a young graduate if you are fluent in
another language than just your mother tongue
But I think there's so much more
than just the statistics
You're going to get a job if you study the language in college
You're actually going to learn much more
about the overall the wider community
and even just
yourself and your own language.
