FLAC at UF: Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum
North Americans have long had a love-hate relationship with languages other than English. We postpone their study until the last years of high school, when brains and tongues have passed the optimum stage for achieving fluency and a native-like accent. Immigrants to our country pitch their native language like so much useless ballast and hurry to learn English, seen as the key to prosperity.
Yet we love the idea of speaking certain foreign languages. They seem the epitome of sophistication, the essence of amorè, the distillation of joie de vivre: windmills that we dream of tilting. And today, in a world of free trade, multinationals, and market-driven economies, Americans’ much-touted pragmatism draws us to language study. It's clear to see (and hear) that fluency in languages and cultures other than our own can be a career asset.
Florida is a state where many languages other than English are in wide use. Our geopolitical position as bridge between North and Latin America increasingly defines the state's cultural, business, and linguistic climate. Florida's top five export markets and three of its top five sources of imports are located in Latin America. Many European and Asian companies have placed their Latin American headquarters here, and international tourism to the state has grown exponentially in the past decade.
Florida has become a leading player on the hemispheric stage, and Florida’s students must prepare to operate effectively within this multinational, multilingual reality.
The University of Florida is committed to expanding the international expertise of its students, a fact borne out by a glance at its catalogs, which list 470+ courses dealing exclusively or extensively with international topics. Foreign language study is increasingly popular at UF, in spite of the university's unusually low requirement (one year of foreign language study, versus two at similar research universities).
More students now arrive at UF with substantial high school experience in a foreign language, and more continue language study beyond the first year, striving to achieve enough fluency and cultural savoir faire to sharpen their competitive edge on the job market.
Majoring or minoring in a foreign language is the classical route to fluency, since the many literary and cultural works such students have to read and discuss provide superb "input" for language learning. But students majoring in other fields are also increasingly interested in acquiring and maintaining foreign proficiency, and it is for them that the FLAC (Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum) at FLA program was particularly designed. The program will give such students the opportunity to practice their languages in the context of a course they have chosen for its intrinsic interest to them.
FLAC at FLA is a multidisciplinary project sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Center for Latin American Studies, with the enthusiastic support of President John Lombardi and Dean Willard Harrison of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Its goal is to integrate the study of Latin American topics with the practice of certain Latin American languages (in the future the program will expand to take in other languages and other geopolitical areas). The program’s first two years of operation will be directed by Geraldine Nichols and Michel Achard (Romance Languages), and Terry McCoy (Latin American Studies), with the help of a generous grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
FLAC at FLA is fairly simple; it creates one-credit enhancement sections - in Spanish, Portuguese, or French - to accompany selected Latin American Studies courses (taught in English). Over the next two years, Latin American Studies courses with enhancement sections will be offered in the departments of anthropology, sociology, political science, history, religion, philosophy, and music. Students who enroll in one of these Latin American Studies courses and who have good foreign language skills may co-enroll in the one-hour enhancement section, where readings and discussion are in the foreign language.
Because of their language skills, enhancement students will have access to materials written by Latin Americans from the Latin American perspective; in many cases, they will read texts that are unavailable in English translation. FLAC will convince students that knowledge of another language broadens their access to other cultures; it should also increase their confidence in using the languages they have learned.
Over the past decade, FLAC programs of different types have been implemented at some 30 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Most are at small liberal arts colleges, where interdisciplinary courses are more easily organized; FLAC at FLA is one of very few to be undertaken at a large public university.
The Romance and Latin American Studies professors who have designed FLAC at FLA are optimistic that the program can work at the University of Florida in spite of our size. This is because Florida's students have grown up in a multilingual and multicultural state, and they are eager to be given the opportunity to prepare themselves to deal with other languages and other cultures, within Florida and beyond its borders.
Images: Mosque in Cordoba, Spain: Timor Espallargas
