(Photo: Flickr User- Freekon)
First I want to share a little story. Last week, I found an American student helping a Chinese lady in the library of how to use the copy machine. In the quiet library, I sat right outside of the copy machine room, and their conversation in Chinese caught my attention while I was studying. You know when you are in a foreign country and heard people speak your language, you just can’t help not to listen what they talk about. When I listened closely, I realized it was an American student used his Chinese skill to explain how the machine works to the lady. I assumed the Chinese lady doesn’t speak English, and even the student’s Chinese was not fluent, I could tell he was using all the Chinese he knows to help the lady. I was impressed for more and more people learning and speaking Chinese.
During the recent research on my class’s final presentation about learning a second language, I found a surprising news article about the amount of students learning foreign language. Since the world is all about globalization, we think that learning a foreign language is more popular than ever. The Washington Post explained about The Modern Language Association’s report, it said that 100,000 less college students took language classes in 2013 compares to 2009. The rate of college students in United States choosing to learn foreign language in 2013 had the largest drop since 1995, dropped from 8.7 per 100 students to 8.1 per 100 students.
The Washington Post said the reason of causing language learning downfall is there are more and more class options college students have. Because currently business management is the most popular major in the nation, and there weren’t many class involved with technology like digital arts and computer sciences 50 years ago. Therefore students have more option to choose what they like to study beside language. And another reason is elementary and secondary schools are providing more language classes, so students don’t feel the needs to learning foreign language in college like before.
More and more companies started to land business and open branches in different countries. The need of employees with foreign language skill is definitely growing. Although the numbers of students learning foreign language in college is decreasing, we should know that speaking a second language is going to bring advantage in future career and social life. When you speak one more language, you have a bigger chance to success than others.
Trilingual and Stylish 