By: Ashton Newton Entertainment Editor
I first started learning French as a first-year student in high school. My initial reasons were just because I thought it was cool, but years later, I’ve grown to value the experiences and opportunities that I’ve had from studying French.
Through studying French, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of new people. This summer I hosted a French student named Andrea and it was an extremely valuable experience. I was able to gain insight into another culture that I wouldn’t have been able to without studying French.
At Western, I’m on my second year of French and I’ve found the program to be very rewarding. As someone who aspires to travel in the future, having knowledge of French language and culture will be valuable.
Foreign language at Western isn’t only about the language; it’s about the culture, too. Having a better understanding of other cultures around the globe creates more well-rounded and culturally understanding students.
Western’s announcement that departments are seeing 5-10 percent budget cuts across the board puts the foreign language department at risk of seeing some serious upcoming cuts.
Western offers Spanish, American Sign Language, French and German. With French and German being the two smallest departments of the four, they’re at risk of being cut. My experiences with foreign language at Western aren’t the only positive ones.
Jill Ketcham, sophomore early childhood education major, is currently in her first year of German and it has already made positive impacts on her life.
“Considering I went to Germany, it has made me appreciate what I saw more and it’s made me want to learn more about the culture. Now that I’ve been learning it and I have a background, I’ll learn way more when I go back,” said Ketcham.
I believe that French and German are both important to Western and have made many positive impacts on students’ lives. Cutting them would result in losing a great opportunity to gain insight into other cultures. With cultural diversity being something Western prides itself on, this would be a great loss.
Foreign language experience makes potential candidates for employment much more desirable. Whether it be any of the languages Western offers, experience studying a foreign language can open many doors in the future, especially in the fields of government, business, law, medicine and technology, as those are all fields with a growing international presence.
“[Spanish] is more applicable in the US right now, but what I know about French is when you learn French, you learn a lot about English as well. You learn a lot of vocabulary, you learn about a different culture, you learn about different ways to think about things. What’s useful professionally isn’t always what’s useful for you personally.
People are different and they need to have different possibilities.”
said Professor Maguelonne Ival, who teaches second and third year French at Western.
According to the American Council on the teaching of foreign languages, learning a foreign language has many positive impacts on study habits and learning. Their website, actfl.org, is a great resource about all the benefits of learning a foreign language, including increased linguistic awareness, memory and reading skills and citing scientific journals and studies done over the last 50 years.
Having a wide array of foreign languages to study is great for Western students’ opportunities to gain insight into other cultures and increase their success in other classes.
Protecting French and German from being cut is important for the university’s international programs. There are many study abroad opportunities available through studying French and German, which only require a year or two of studying the language, that would be lost with a cut as well.
Studying French has been a large part of my college experience, and I’m not alone. French and German are both important departments for Western and I believe that losing them would be a big loss for the foreign language department and the school as a whole.
Contact the author at anewton15@wou.edu
