Languages

Boola! Boola!

Hopefully everybody had a wonderful time a Bulldog Days! Though the rain was threatening at first, the sun managed to break through eventually and we had a couple of glorious days :)

One thing that probably came up during BDDays as you guys were visiting panels and talking with current students, and something I haven't had the chance to talk about yet, is languages.

So all of you probably know by now that Yale requires all of its students to take at least one semester of a language - and that's only if you are already significantly advanced in a second language.... I already hear many of you groaning - "Languages?! I hate foreign languages! Where's my organic chem textbook....". Then of course there are those of you who are already hepta-lingual. Among the incoming class, you will see a wide spectrum of language ability and interest.

Coming into Yale, I was one of those organic chem lovers (well, physics to be exact) and after having taken 2 years of French in High School decided that I was finished with foreign languages forever (I was one of those everyone should just speak English types...)

To Yale's credit, I was forced to start a new language, or continue French, upon entering. My choice: German. Why? It seemed the most like English and I really, really, liked bratwurst. My lack of enthusiasm, however, quickly turned into a burning passion. I loved German. Despite having class everyday at 9:30 I looked forward to getting up and going to class in the morning and seeing my other 7 classmates, something which was never the case for French in High School. Intro language classes at Yale (first 4 semesters) are taught for an hour everyday, and are focused heavily on developing speaking skills through interaction with your classmates and teachers in a small-classroom environment. Compared with the frustrating rate at which I had learned French in High School, I learned German incredibly quickly (it helps that from day 1 no English was ever used in class).

I ended up spending a portion of that Freshman year summer studying on a Yale fellowship in Freiburg, Germany. Furthermore, I began taking French again at Yale through the intensive language program, in which students have 10 hours a week of class time. I also decided to study abroad in Morocco to start learning Arabic while continuing to progress in French. Next year, I plan to take Intensive Spanish, which along with the fact that I have a Colombian suite-mate, should enable me to gain proficiency in Spanish in a year.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that learning languages at Yale is unlike learning languages in High School and the vast majority of universities. It's fast, intense, and fun - and it changed me from a language hater, to a language lover.