When choosing my fall 2025 courses, one I had been eager to add was a French course.
The last one I took was “Beginning French 1” in 2024, and I enjoyed the experience. I hadn’t had the chance to practice French since then, and I missed learning in the classroom. I would have taken “French 102” immediately afterward if it weren’t for how foreign languages are taught at Ferris.
The in-person classes are only taught on rotation in the spring, meaning I have to wait longer for the desired language course and presentation.
Like many academic areas, foreign languages are an investment. The budget cannot remedy all and expect a grand return on said investments. On top of this, other language courses are offered online through other establishments, so if I wanted to take other language courses, I could explore these options.
However, this is not what I am looking for. I want a course I can attend in person and interact with rather than just another electronic textbook, combined with impersonal voices and an instructor that appears only in email alone in my dorm room. Language courses, for me, should involve some level of physical or practical presentation. For a class that teaches languages, not communicating in person seems like losing a vital aspect of the course.
This frustrates me as language courses offer more than simply an aesthetic tool on someone’s verbal arsenal for future tourist rest stops. They offer opportunities far beyond textbook pronunciations. What these classes offer can be seen when contrasted against how many “experience” other cultures daily.
Today’s technology manages to capture our world via screens of evolving resolutions. Through our media, news reports, podcasts or social media posts, we receive different perspectives on international issues, cultures and people we have never met. But often, this media may be the only time one learns about what people around the world are up to, and one won’t search for more when the TV is off.
How these cultures and people are depicted is not up to learning about them but only notable events or conflicts, either within that specific country or with “us.” If someone doesn’t look past their screen, they may get an unfair depiction because of what can count as breaking news or not worth showing.
Learning a language doesn’t fix or combat this; however, it is a small part of an education that can teach you about a culture’s way of life in ways that don’t seek to widen the distance between us but to mend together something more diverse and richer. It allows you to step outside one’s mind, societal norms, roles and experiences, placing yourself in a new space.
You test yourself to understand others, developing empathy and compassion. Learning their language and customs means not forming an impression via news broadcasts and political talks. In language learning, you start in a neutral position, learning the foundations until you can converse and articulate your way of life in the language of both you and another.
In my cultural anthropology class, I learned a simple yet important concept about other groups and cultures: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. This perspective attempts to remove any resemblance to seeing oneself on top of other cultures and places them as curious, open and neither lesser nor better than others. I think this logic can also be applied when learning a new language.
Language courses at Ferris should be given a greater eye, not to put other areas down, but to make them more available. Of course, learning a language does not provide practical applications both assured and immediate, like engineering or medicine, or even areas in the arts like the humanities and history. Yet, I think that having only two languages to choose from and only being able to pick the class in the spring is disappointing.
Why should I wait even longer to take such a class or take it somewhere else? It is a hassle that by the time you finish the first class, you will have waited nearly two years to take the next step. More importantly, if you don’t keep practicing on top of studying for other courses, which may need more time devoted to it, you begin to lose that knowledge.