While reading Don Quixote in Spanish might be educational, the future of foreign-language classes may rest in activities more akin to eating tapas while discussing the Euro.
A report from the Modern Language Association - a New York-based organization that offers educational suggestions to humanities departments in institutions across the country - will recommend that foreign-language curricula at national universities cover a wider breadth of cultural topics, said MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal.
The report - to be officially released in early March - will primarily emphasize making language majors more interdisciplinary by focusing on the countries' histories.
And Penn foreign-language departments already feature most of the report's proposals, School of Arts and Sciences Director of Academic Affairs Kent Peterman said.
For example, courses like "Business Italian" and "The German Media Landscape" are taught in Italian and German, respectively, but concentrate on topics rather than the language itself.
"Penn has a very good comparative-literature program that includes different language programs including English, which brings professors and students into a conversation between various languages," said Romance Languages Department Chairman Roman de la Campa.
"I think Penn is in a unique situation in that many aspects of the MLA proposal are already being implemented," he said.
Yiddish professor Kathryn Hellerstein echoed these sentiments.
"The teaching of Yiddish at Penn involves both cultural material - newspapers, films, radio shows, songs, theater, folk sayings, jokes, political materials, advertisements, oral histories - as well as traditional literature," she wrote in an e-mail.
"These materials have been part of the Yiddish curriculum for a number of years," she added.
Still, MLA officials say that there is always room for growth.
"The question is how to encourage all students to study foreign language with the same devotion as, say, math or science," Feal said.
The panel - comprised of MLA representatives and college professors - additionally addressed the importance of studying foreign language in a post-Sept. 11 environment, as well as the overarching role of language in American society.
However, the MLA isn't the only organization making these types of recommendations.
Over the past year, the U.S. government has offered financial aid to help schools expand their foreign-language education programs.
Only 18 percent of people in the U.S. can speak a language other than English, according to the MLA Web site.
"The U.S. is a nation without advanced competence in many languages," Feal said. "We want to help encourage people to invest in language study."
