There is a debate discussing Should Foreign Language Classes Be Mandatory in College? Most of the authors' side with allowing the student to make their choice. High school kids only take foreign language because it is mandatory to complete or unless they are trying to better their mother tongue (which is mainly Hispanic students trying to improve their Spanish). To know more than one language can help people with certain jobs if it involves socializing with other nationalities. In the job marketing, Mandarin is the language of the future. There has been an increase from 30 million to 100 million people learning Mandarin since 2004. If your dream job is to work at McDonald's, knowing English is good enough. If a student's career involves knowing a second language then it worth learning more in college. However, if your future job doesn't involve knowing another language, it shouldn't be forced upon college students.
Learning other languages do cost you a bit of money too because you need to buy books, dictionaries, and audio books. Taking a class to learn another language for one year or two doesn't make a student proficient in French, Mandarin, or Russian. Perhaps you can socialize with a foreign person for about 10 minutes until you run out of words to use or can't understand everything the person had just said.
Ironically the internet also takes over this part of our life too. Now we don't need to take classes to know another langue. There is Google Translate, iTranslate, iHandy, SayHi, and other voice translator apps. It's definitely easier but is it better for us rather than completely knowing the language?
Should more high school students take Mandarin? Would college students be more stressed if graduating from college requires to take more foreign language classes? Is a second or third language really necessary?
-Nayeli Gracian
Knowing more than one language can be very beneficial. Jobs sometimes look for bilingual workers who can fluently speak and understand other languages besides English. Although there are positives to taking another language, like Mandarin for example, I feel it should be optional. Learning a new language can either be easy or hard depending on the person trying to learn it. It can also be costly like you mentioned where you will need to buy books, dictionaries, and audio books. Online, however, you can use translation apps for free but they are not always accurate. I feel that in high schools and colleges it should be optional to take a foreign language because really it is up to the individual to decide whether they would like to know a new language or not. If a foreign language course is a requirement, a person can feel obligated and frustrated with learning a new language they have to learn rather than want to learn. It is better to let that person decide if they want to learn a foreign language for their own reasoning rather than forcefully.
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