OUR MISSION:
With a strong balance of the grammatical and communicative approaches to Foreign Language learning, we will prepare our students with the necessary skills, thereby providing better opportunities for a college education and the competitive workforce. |
WHY STUDY FOREIGN LANGUAGES?:
Here are fifteen things studying a new language might do for you.
Language study:
- broadens your experiences; expands your view of the world
- encourages critical reflection on the relation of language and culture, language and thought; fosters an understanding of the interrelation of language and human nature
- develops your intellect; teaches you how to learn
- teaches and encourages respect for other peoples
- contributes to cultural awareness and literacy, such as knowledge of original texts
- builds practical skills (for travel or commerce or as a tool for other disciplines)
- improves the knowledge of your own language through comparison and contrast with the foreign language
- exposes you to modes of thought outside of your native language
- a sense of relevant past, both cultural and linguistic
- balances content and skill (rather than content versus skill)
- expands opportunities for meaningful leisure activity (travel, reading, viewing foreign language films)
- contributes to achievement of national goals, such as economic development or national security
- contributes to the creation of your personality
- enables the transfer of training (such as learning a second foreign anguage)
- preserves (or fosters) a country’s image as a cultured nation
The above modified from Alan C. Frantz, "Seventeen Values of Foreign Language Study" (ADFL Bulletin, vol. 28, Nr.1, Fall 1996).
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