Learning Latin American Languages

A significant issue for students of Latin America is language proficiency. Primarily Spanish and Portuguese, but also Quechua, Guarani, and others are essential tools for communication in the region. Amidst the not-so-ivory towers of academia, faculty and administrators face difficult questions regarding what to include in graduate and undergraduate curricula, especially when needing to balance declining budgets and an ever-increasing body of knowledge and skill sets that they wish their students to master in completion of the program. In the field of Latin American Studies – as in other areas of study that are region-specific or transnational – foreign language instruction and/or competency can become an easy target for elimination. Ultimately, however, such a decision proves to be short-sighted, weakening the overall caliber of the program and the qualifications of those who emerge from it supposedly prepared to enter professional life.

Several years ago, I was among a group of professors advising a business school in the creation of an International MBA program. The core faculty had decided to eliminate any foreign language requirement in an attempt to streamline their course of study. In order to be competitive in the academic market, graduate programs – and especially MBAs – must be able to offer a package to prospective students that will not delay their progress toward degree completion. This is in addition to ensuring that their graduates will exit the program equipped with the necessary skills to succeed in their profession. The faculty explained that their justification for cutting out the foreign language requirement from their IMBA was that “everyone speaks English anyway.” I strongly disagreed with their reasoning, arguing that such a supposition will guarantee that their graduates will be less prepared and, perhaps more importantly, at a strategic disadvantage when in a business meeting or across a negotiating table. Their putative monolingual graduates would find themselves in situations in which their counter parts would understand everything the MBAs said but the MBAs would not be able to follow the asides in other languages.

Another common mistake made by ill-informed administrators or educators is that students can just pick up languages on the street. While many domestic, non-international students in places such as Miami, Los Angeles, and Austin do indeed possess a high degree of fluency in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and other languages, rarely does this reach a level of proficiency that could be categorized as academic or professional fluency. This is especially true in cultural settings where the “street language” exhibits significant informalities and grammatical errors. While these students certainly have an advantage over monolingual students who may attempt to learn a new language with no previous knowledge of it, especially in terms of the evident comfort with which the heritage speakers will transit into the “foreign” language, most still require more formal study to reach professional standards of communication. Ultimately, this is no different than monolingual English-speaking students who must learn language and writing skills in English from elementary school, through their secondary education, and on into college. Most institutions across the country require “Freshman English” competency. Normally, the institutions offer alternatives to passing the class, such as Advanced Placement scores, proficiency tests, or similar. Rather than eliminating foreign language competency requirements, programs that wish to thoroughly prepare their students could follow a parallel approach, utilizing acceptance of multiple measures in satisfying the program completion requirement.

International students coming from non-English speaking countries are not adversely affected by the exclusion of any foreign language requirement, since they frequently have an advantage of educated fluency in the language of the region. Similarly, they normally are not delayed in degree completion because of the presence of such a requirement since for them English itself is the foreign language and institutions like the University of California require the TOEFL exam for admission and accept it in fulfillment of their foreign language requirement. This is increasing significant as institutions of higher learning – especially public ones that rely on state funding – seek to offset budgetary reductions through augmented out-of-state fees.

Foreign language learning has ramifications well beyond the simply mastery of grammatical forms. Successful language instruction must include a deeper understanding of the culture in which the target language developed and persists. Being able to “speak the language” of another people entails more than an understanding of grammar and vocabulary. It means that one can grasp the nuances and connotations of the other speaker, and can appreciate why particular groups behave in a particular manner. This is as priceless in business as it is in diplomacy, and students thus prepared will succeed where others will fail.