Students perusing the course catalog each term are offered a wide range of foreign language classes. But inevitably, because of the breadth of the whole wide world, there will always be more dialects spoken than classes offered.
The Yamada Language Center, located in 121 Pacific, offers a Self-Study Language Program that allows students to receive credit by learning foreign languages not taught through the University. The program is now in its sixth year and has been expanded to include 10 languages. This term, the Center offers Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Hindi/Urdu, Portuguese, Romanian, Swahili, Thai and Turkish.
Each course is led by a native speaker of the language — not necessarily a professor or even a graduate student. The teacher meets with students for lengths of time depending on the number of credits they’re enrolled for. Students register for the course through the Department of Linguistics and can choose between one to three credits for each course.
Ruxandra Westra, a practicing professional for the University’s College of Education, teaches the newly added Romanian course. She went over the basic colors, verbs, sentence structure and pronunciation of the language.
“It’s very self-paced and based on materials that are here. It’s for the do-it-yourself type of person,” Westra said. “Most of it is taught orally, not with grammar. We’re just going to answer questions and talk, talk, talk.”
Drew Herron, a student in the Romanian course, is an international studies major and is also registered in an Arabic self-study course. He spent time in Romania this summer and said that learning another tongue helps him better understand that culture.
“When you compare things to another language, it makes more sense to you,” Herron said.
Aashim Tyagi, who leads a self-study Hindu course, expressed similar sentiments.
“It’s difficult to learn another language out of the blue. You get to meet people, it’s fun and challenging, and it breaks language and cultural barriers,” Tyagi said.
Most classes meet in the Yamada Center’s lounge. At the end of a term, students from all self-study language courses come together for a group performance — which doubles as the class final.
The Yamada Center’s lounge is also the location for its foreign film series, which runs throughout the school year, showing every Tuesday at 7 p.m.
A full list of services the Yamada Center offers is available on its Web site at babel.uoregon.edu.