It was 1972 at the State University of New York at Cortland when Terry Caccavale walked into that Survey of French Literature course. French was her major, and she studied the language throughout high school. But on that first day of class, when Professor Catherine Porter opened her mouth, Caccavale couldn't believe her ears.
"I will be conducting this class all in French," Caccavale recalls Porter saying. "Don't bother to write notes in English. Just write what you hear and make sense of it. This will be a journey, and we'll all get through it together."
Caccavale sat speechless with about 15 other French majors in that classroom.
"We were all afraid to death of going through with this course," Caccavale said. But as the semester progressed, Caccavale realized that she was mastering the language easier than ever before.
At the time, Porter's French class was rare. Based on programs that started in Canada in the 1960s, total immersion classes thrust students into a new world of learning where everything is done in the target language.
Experts say that knowing and understanding other languages and cultures will be not only beneficial, but critical as the world shifts into a global society. This puts education institutions in a pivotal position to prepare tomorrow's leaders with the tools needed for communication.
In colleges and universities, the study of languages other than English has been steadily climbing since 1998, and increased by 12.9 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to a 2006 survey by the Modern Language Association (MLA). The big three — Spanish, French and German — represent more than 70 percent of those enrollments. But other languages have seen serious growth in that four-year period, specifically Arabic (up 127 percent) and Chinese (up 51 percent), according to the survey.
This trend matches the prediction that people will need to be bilingual or multilingual to succeed in this new economy. But with so many out there, which language should people focus on today to prepare for tomorrow?
"I just don't think we can predict that there will be one language that we need to know," said Marty Abbott, director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. "I think it's important that as a country, we start to put value in growing these multilingual citizens."
There are 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world, and many predict that more than half will perish in the 21st century. Languages are dying daily due to globalization, oppressive governments and natural disasters that are wiping out small communities, according to David Crystal, a linguist who lives in Holyhead, North Wales, and wrote numerous books, including "The Future of Language."
In the past, Abbott said, American schools tended to focus on languages of the moment. In the 1960s after the launch of Sputnik, she said, Russian programs started popping up. The same thing happened to Japanese in the '80s when Japan's economy was strong. Now, she said, there is a similar move as a result of the Chinese economy.
