Your professor is teaching a class on curriculum and language policy. Write a post responding to the professor's question. Express and support your opinion and contribute to the discussion in your own words. An effective response has at least 100 words.
Dr. Helena Brandt
Some universities require every student, whatever their subject, to study a language other than the one they are taught in. Supporters say that a second language changes how a graduate reads evidence produced elsewhere and is the only part of a degree that cannot be acquired quickly later. Critics reply that a requirement produces two years of resented, half-learned language and takes hours from the subject the student came to study. Should such a requirement exist? Why?
Ines
I would keep it, and I would defend it on the narrowest ground available. Almost every field has a literature in at least one other language, and students who cannot read it do not conclude that they are missing something; they conclude that the field is smaller than it is. That is a distortion no summary or translation tool repairs, because you cannot look for what you do not know exists.
Rafael
The ground Ines chooses is exactly where the requirement fails. Two years of a compulsory language does not get anybody to the point of reading a monograph, and pretending otherwise is how these schemes survive. If the aim is access to a literature, teach reading knowledge of one language in one intensive year and assess only that. What we actually run is a diluted conversation course assessed on speaking, which serves the stated aim not at all.