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More students enrolling in Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Urdu, Hindi, Vietnamese, and, especially Spanish; fewer learning Dutch, French, German, Greek (ancient and modern), Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, and Yiddish. So Werner Sollors, Cabot professor of English literature and professor of Afro-American studies, characterized undergraduates' language learning over the past 15 years, during a Faculty of Arts and Sciences discussion of foreign-language requirements last spring.
That debate (see "Curricular Reform, More and Less," March-April 1998) reveals that although 60 percent or so of entering students already satisfy the College's modest foreign-language standards, more than 75 percent of undergraduates study language here. The faculty is conducting more research to determine whether students are merely exposed to foreign languages by their Harvard courses, or gain proficiency--and what further requirements, if any, to impose. In the meantime, the students study away, choosing from a smorgasbord of more than 50 languages taught here, from Akkadian and Welsh to Thai, Tibetan, and Turkish.
Why do they study languages? There is evidence both statistical and anecdotal. During the past decade, Richard J. Light, Ph.D. '69, professor of education in the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Education, has conducted the Harvard Assessment Seminars to explore aspects of "teaching, learning, and student life"--how best to instruct students, how to help them organize their learning together, how to connect the academic and extracurricular sides of the undergraduate experience. The seminar process included discussion among more than 100 faculty members and administrators from Harvard and other colleges, survey research, and detailed interviews with undergraduates.
The second seminar report on the research, released in 1992, highlighted the "unexpected finding" that courses in "foreign languages and literatures are characterized with special enthusiasm by both students and alumni." With the exception of tutorials, the researchers found that these classes--despite the heavy time demands they impose--were rated more favorably than those in any other discipline, and that the ratings rose as students' work proceeded from basic language courses into more advanced literature courses. In explaining the phenomenon, Light found students responded most favorably whenever "classes...are structured to maximize personal engagement and collegial interaction." That is, the language classes' small size, interactive teaching, encouragement of small-group work outside of class, and frequent assignments and assessments of progress exactly match students' preferences for learning in general.
In the essay by John D. Heller published here--an unsolicited manuscript--a young alumnus explains how falling in love with learning a language shaped his own passage through Harvard, and has continued to shape his pursuits since.
~ THE EDITORS