Should Mason Offer Arabic, Chinese?

Study Committee to Explore

Critical Languages Feasibility

By Rebecca Gomez (November 29, 2006)

“We would love to offer another foreign language at George Mason, above all, Chinese or Arabic,” says Linda Johnsen, who, in addition to being a French teacher and head of the Foreign Language Department, is also chair of the Critical Languages Study Committee (CLSC).

The Critical Languages Study Committee is a group exploring a way to offer “critical languages” such as Arabic and Chinese as a credit course. This committee is going to survey the students in the middle and high school to discover if there is even an interest in learning Chinese or Arabic. The committee currently consists of Johnsen, Principal Mr. Bob Snee, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Gloria Guba, foreign language teacher Ms. Meriem Bacha, who is a native Arabic speaker, and three other teachers and several parents.

To determine the level of interest and the feasibility of offering the courses, the committee is going to take three steps. First, they are going to draft a student survey and organize the information. Second, they are going to analyze the results of the survey and decide how we can feasibly offer one or both of the languages. Third, they are going to prepare and present a proposal for Curriculum Committee approval in January. The final decisions could go into effect as soon as the following school year.

President Bush announced that the country is in a desperate need for speakers of both of these languages because of the Middle East situation and because China is a steadily rising world power. Any student who is pursuing a career in business, politics or international relations with the ability to speak either of those languages is going to be highly prized, as well as greatly needed.

Arlington County has recently teamed up with Northern Virginia Community College and has begun offering Chinese and Arabic as an evening course, both for high school and college credit. Arlington County has between five and six thousand secondary students, but only 53 have enrolled for evening classes. This is somewhat worrisome to the CLSC. “Certainly there is going to be some interest to take these courses, we just have to figure out if there is enough interest,” said Johnsen.

Questions being considered in addition to whether there is enough interest, include: Would students be interested in studying one year of conversational language, or would they want to continue with the hope of becoming fluent? Would the classes be distance learning, which involves a teacher to supervise and administer tests in class while the students learn from watching a teacher broadcast on the television or computer, or would there just be evening classes?

“As much as we would like to offer a critical language course, sometimes with our size it is just not possible,” reports Madame Johnsen. “Also, students at George Mason are so active in sports and other extracurricular activities that the idea of having an evening class might be completely ruled out. Distance learning is one way such a course might be delivered because there is such a lack of qualified teachers. There is a Chinese distance learning program being piloted in Fairfax County this year.”

The critical languages are not the first attempt to diversify our language program. “In the past we have offered classes in Latin, but as the language progressed fewer and fewer students wanted to continue. And there were few students to begin with. There were half the beginning number in Latin II and less than a handful left in Latin III. The program only lasted five years,” said Johnsen.

There has been a huge language progression in Falls Church with the addition of Spanish in the elementary school. Hopefully, if kids in younger grades have reached fluency in Spanish by the time they reach high school, then Arabic and Chinese may become much more popular than at the start of the program. It all depends on the students how long these courses will be available.