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Boning Up on Bulgarian
by Mark Alden Branch ’86
October 2001 More than 50 languages are taught at Yale, from the old reliables Spanish, French, and German, to African languages such as Zulu and Yoruba, along with newcomers Hindi and modern Greek. Such a range of choices would surely satisfy the desires of any undergraduate—or would it? As a new program at the Center for Language Study (CLS) is demonstrating, there is a small but determined group of students willing to go an extra mile to learn another of the world’s 6,800 languages.
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“This is very emphatically not language for tourists.”
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As part of a program called Directed Independent Language Study (DILS), six students are taking less-taught languages this year—not for credit, but with supervision by CLS. The students use texts, audio tapes, and software to practice the language, then meet twice weekly with a “language partner”: a native speaker of the language (usually a graduate student) who is paid by CLS not to teach, but to talk to the student. At the end of the term, an exam is given by a language instructor from another university, and the student gets a final evaluation. Nina Garrett, the director of the CLS, created DILS to address student demand for languages in which Yale cannot afford to offer classes. New languages are not added to the curriculum haphazardly; student demand must be demonstrated, and most important, says Garrett, “Yale is reluctant to commit to offering less than two years of a language”—enough so that the classes can fulfill Yale’s foreign-language requirement. So if there is some interest in a language, but not enough to justify a full two-year sequence of courses, DILS is a fallback. The introduction of DILS has been met with some skepticism from those who worry that the program is not up to Yale language-teaching standards. But Garrett says the courses of study are designed to be rigorous and academic. “This is very emphatically not language for tourists,” she says. Although the program is not for credit, DILS director Maria Kosinski says the students take the work very seriously. “These are motivated people,” says Kosinski. “We review the applications and make sure they have the self-discipline for this kind of work.” Students submit applications to the program identifying the language they want to take and why. Once Kosinski is convinced a student is a good candidate for DILS, she will approve the application provided she can find three things: sufficient course materials—which are not available for all languages—a qualified instructor to help create the syllabus and administer the final exam, and a language partner. The program got under way last year, when four members of the Yale Slavic Chorus studied Bulgarian to prepare for a trip to Bulgaria last summer. One of those women is continuing her study of the language through DILS this year. Four students with academic interests ranging from Caribbean studies to international relations are studying Dutch, a language once offered for credit at Yale, and one undergraduate is learning Thai, the language of his parents. Garrett and Kosinski say that DILS could be a way for some languages to become established at Yale, much in the way that Hindi started out with non-credit tutorials before Yale began offering it for credit three years ago. In the meantime, the students of these less-taught tongues say they are satisfied with the doors their newfound skills will open for them.  |
