COLUMN: The Foreign Language Dilemma

From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95 From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95Sundeep M. Goel used to be one of the most respected members of the Undergraduate Assembly. But this year he's just an ordinary senior. Like all of us, he's struggling like hell to get by. Standing between Goel and his diploma is an obstacle that is familiar to many readers -- the foreign language requirement. Goel is not in the College; he is an engineer. But as a computer science major, he is required to pass two foreign language courses. Those engineers with other majors do not face this challenge, but Goel does, so of course he put it off until his last year. Then he decided to study Hindi, his parents' native tongue. He hated it. After just a week of classes, Goel apparently lost his mind. According to observers, he ran straight from his Hindi class to the offices of the computer science department, where he demanded to be released from the major. "They literally laughed in my face," reported Goel. But his year of experience on the UA had not gone to waste. Goel knew how to handle situations like this. "No, you don't understand!" he retorted. "I hate foreign language! I just hate it!" Alas, it was to no avail; the secretaries to whom Goel was raving did not release him from the requirement. Fortunately, Goel left before security arrived. He came home and dealt with his troubles in the usual way, commanding a housemate to "bring the whiskey!" With a little help from Jack Daniels, he ranted on about his displeasure with the foreign language requirement, with Hindi and with his own buffoonery. "This is all so stupid! I'm so stupid! Sometimes I just can't justify my own existence." In fact, Goel's existence is often difficult to justify. It is much harder, however, to justify the foreign language requirement at the University. To graduate, a student in the College must achieve "proficiency" in a foreign language. The argument for requiring work in a foreign language is based on a series of tired cliches. University students must be "prepared" to live in the "global environment" of the "21st century." In five years, according to this logic, when it becomes the 21st century and everything suddenly changes, national borders will mean less, and so in order to succeed our students must be required to take four semesters of, say, Dutch. This is nonsense. As the world becomes smaller, foreign language becomes less necessary. The language our generation will need to know is English. That is the international language of business, of government and even of music. Advocates of foreign language point out that European students learn two, three and even four foreign languages. Good for them! One of those languages is nearly always English. And if the Germans learn English, there is no reason to waste our resources by forcing American students to learn German. Ethnocentric? Probably. Trite? Maybe. True? Definitely. I do not discount the value of knowledge for its own sake, and everyone should have the opportunity to study other languages and cultures. But requiring it is indefensible. There is too much else to learn. Besides, what do we really accomplish with our "proficiency" requirement? Certainly not true proficiency. One can place out of the requirement by doing well on the College Board Achievement Test. The Princeton Review preparation book boasts that to accomplish this feat, one need only answer two-thirds of the questions correctly. In most places, 66 percent is a "D." At Penn it's "proficiency." Successful completion of four semesters of most languages will earn a student the label of "proficient," but how well will a Penn student function in Israel after four semesters of Hebrew, or in France after four semesters of French? It would not be a pretty sight, as those who have studied those languages here know. A composition submitted by a French student about to pass her proficiency exam illustrates the underwhelming level of competence that is required. Translated from the French, she writes, "It is my birthday. I have a problem. I want to go out with my friends but my parents want me to have dinner with them. Going out with my friends will be fun. Dinner with my parents will not be fun. I know that the meal will be very annoying. My brother will play with his peas. But my mother has bought a cake for dessert. Wait! I have an idea. My friends and my family and I will go to a Menudo concert. We will bring the cake." All the verbs were written in the wrong tense. "Careful about your verbs!" wrote the teacher while grading the paper. Of course the grade was "A." The University will soon certify her as "proficient." Students take four semesters to study a language, but they do not learn it well enough to make it worthwhile. Meanwhile, students are not quite mastering English, the language which they really need to learn. Sundeep Goel can testify to this, although not very articulately. His friends make fun of him because of his poor grammar. He cannot conjugate the verb "to eat" (although "to drink" does not allude him). He will graduate never having written a lengthy paper or having read a book that was not a textbook. In the "real world" of the "twenty-first century," we will not have to know how to communicate in Japanese. We will have to know how to write and speak in English. Many of us will leave the University doing neither very well. At Felicia's on Friday night, I overheard a Penn student tell her date, "Like, I, like, always end my sentences with 'okay,' you know?" Such communication disorders are not atypical. But they could be cured, if the University would pay the same attention to English as it does to foreign language. In the meantime, Sundeep Goel and the many others in his position can find solace in the fact that in the end they will almost surely be deemed "proficient" and they will graduate. But along the way they will spend nearly 500 hours and thousands of dollars to learn next to nothing. "Bring the whiskey" indeed!