Students now have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship rewarding proficiency in any foreign language, due to a new law passed by the Oregon legislature last June.
House Bill 2221, which was signed into law on June 16,@@http://www.leg.state.or.us/11reg/pubs/hsemh.html@@ creates the Oregon Roadmap to Language Excellence Scholarship, a $2,000 award from the Oregon Student Assistance Commission. The scholarship is an option for any student attending an Oregon university or college who can demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. It will be offered as long as funds remain available.
“Three or four years of high school study would qualify many students for the minimal level envisioned in this bill,” said Carl Falsgraf@@http://casls.uoregon.edu/pages/about/contact.php@@, director of the Center for Applied Second Language Studies. “The real winners, however, will be the students who have spoken another language at home their whole lives.”
Falsgraf said learning a second language is important because of the personal, social and economic benefits but stated it is harder than people realize to become fluent, and stay fluent, in a second language.
“Two years of a standard language class won’t get you to be fluent any more than two years of gym class make you an Olympic athlete,” Falsgraf said. “(But) gaining proficiency in a second language improves cognitive functioning and gives one access to the people, ideas and perspectives of another culture. American society and the global society benefit from having people able to communicate effectively with each other, easing social and political tensions and contributing to collaborative solutions.”
Falsgraf stated that people who know another language are also much better candidates for jobs, particularly in this economy.
“All things being equal, bilingual people earn more than monolinguals and economies with more bilingual speakers will have an advantage in trade,” Falsgraf said.
The University offers around 170 study abroad programs, of which around 20 focus primarily on learning a language. According to Falsgraf, about 75 percent of the people in language classes are studying Spanish.
Roger Adkins, the associate director of the Office of International Affairs, said studying a language in a foreign country “allows for much more rapid progress in skills related to usage; comprehension and speaking ability; knowledge of idiomatic expressions and even deep understanding of the radically different worldview of another culture.”@@http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worldview@@
Though Adkins said studying abroad is the ideal way to learn a second language, he added that “studying a language here on campus is a very valuable experience as well.”
“Students who have taken a year or more of college-level coursework in a language prior to studying abroad are the ones who benefit the most from the immersion experience and achieve the highest degree of fluency while abroad,” Adkins said. “The main thing that studying abroad adds — and that classroom learning here cannot always replace — is a greater ability to use a language in its everyday communicative contexts. Such an ability is very important in professional fields.”