Best Major for the Life-Long Learning of Languages? College Advice Help!

College Majors
1

I am looking for a major and school that will best aid my quest for life-long learning of languages. I am open to suggestions for the major, but I am guessing that Linguistics or modern languages will be the best decision. I do plan to learn at least 5 languages at some point in life, mostly difficult ones that aren’t taught in the states.
Anyhow, my problem is that I must, for the next 3 years, attend a school in Northeastern Ohio. Here is a list of all of the four year universities that I am considering, in no order (I have done some thinning out):
• Kent State University
• University of Akron
• Case Western Reserve
• Cleveland State University
• John Carroll University
I will be studying abroad for my senior year in a francophone country. I would like to graduate with:
• Fluent French
• Proficiency in a Southeast Asian Language (preferred) or Spanish (~OK)
• Enough of a linguistics background to teach ESL
• Enough of a linguistics background to be able to learn new languages with limited resources: such as some books and immersion, not any more college.
• A bit of the international business spice wouldn’t hurt.
The only thing that I really care about is the academics and achieving of these goals. Anything else is icing on the cake. Yes, I can easily get into any of these schools. I am first in a class of 1473 and have a 32(.25 :(( ) ACT. Except for Cleveland State, none of these colleges have a full fledged linguistics major, but they usually have some classes in a related department.
For linguistics experts: Is this possible? Will I have a solid enough grasp of linguistics with a couple of languages and classes, or do I need what Cleveland State has, which is a full linguistics program?
For college experts: Which of these schools is the strongest for my needs/goals?
For attendees of languages programs @ these schools: I’d love to hear anything!
This isn’t like the major I’m going to get employed with, its more like the major that launches me into international studies/business.

Thanks so much in advance :wink:

P.S. I will be happy to provide any additional information that you need to help.

2

For learning as many languages as possible, I think you need to simply study as many as possible from different language branches – for example, learning French with help you with any other Latin based language, learning a Germanic language will help you with all other Germanic languages, and learning a Slavic language would help you with other Slavic languages, etc. I don’t think you need to study linguistics at all, either to learn languages or to teach ESL.

In addition to taking classes in person, you can study many languages online these days – for free. There are countless language learning videos and online textbooks and courses, plus of course online TV shows, news and everything else from around the world to help with reading and listening comprehension. You might also check out www.newsinslowfrench.com to practice your French.

To teach ESL, you can start out as a volunteer somewhere and go through their training – there are usually “literacy volunteers” at local nonprofits. Then you could try to get a summer position teaching ESL abroad. When you graduate you can do an ESL certification program abroad in Southeast Asia and pick up the local language while you are there, or see if you can just get hired without a certification.

I would recommend some great language programs at universities – especially those with www.thelanguageflagship.org – but I’m not familiar with any in NE Ohio.

3

Wow hey! Thanks for the link and information! So a degree in linguistics isn’t as good compared to actually going after the languages? What then, do linguistics majors do with their degrees? This would help me a lot because only one of these schools has a full fledged linguistics major, but most have a few classes in various related departments. So it would be fine just to take a couple of linguistics classes and actually focus on the language learning in your opinion? What if content for a language is rare? Is that where linguistics shines? I was thinking of it sort of like buying vs renting. You could either rent all 5 languages or make an investment in linguistics that would pay off when you try to learn the languages later, but you don’t think that it is worth doing that way, right? i don’t have to much linguistics experience here :smiley:

4

Wondering what your career goals and financial situation are. You sound like a possible candidate for the Foreign Service – you can learn new languages as part of your career if you get in. Have you looked at schools like Tufts? Run their net price calculator on their website to see what your potential cost would be.

5

Right, well let’s just say I’m a minor, so I can only go to one of the schools on that list up there for the next 3 years. Hopefully, I won’t be too limited by that, but there really is nothing that I can do. I already tried:

A 35 slide power point presentation to parents
Arranging for free room and board with relatives
Studied all summer fro 32 ACT so I could get into top schools all over the country

They will not be convinced.

6

Okay, let me get something out of the way real quick:

Linguistics has nothing to do with learning languages.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. You learn about stuff like phonetics (how speech sounds are made), phonology (how speech sounds go together), morphology (how words are formed), syntax (phrase structure), semantics (meaning), pragmatics (how language is actually used between people), typology (how languages are related), and depending on the program and your focus you’ll learn some interdisciplinary fields. These include things like linguistic anthropology, philosophy of language, computational linguistics…

So quick answer to your original post: Don’t major in linguistics if you just want to learn a bunch of languages.

I won’t go further into details about linguistics unless you want to know more, but for reference I’m double majoring in linguistics and computer science.

Quick answers to your other questions:
Honestly, most other linguistics majors I know either go into academia or combine their linguistics majors with something else that they eventually go into. Note that that combination doesn’t necessarily need to be with a second major. It could be a minor, just taking a few classes, completing an appropriate internship, or anything else that gets them experience in the other field. I can’t think of much linguistics-related stuff you can do with just a bachelors in linguistics; as a general rule, you’d need to go to grad school for that. Now if you were to combine it, what you combine it with depends entirely on your interests and what you hope to do with your degree.

Yes, it would be perfectly fine to just take a couple linguistics classes and focus on the actual languages. The actual linguistics classes wouldn’t be entirely necessary, but might help you learn how to spot certain phenomena in the target languages and understand what’s going on. Again though, it wouldn’t be necessary.

7

Right! So you would recommend to just double major in two languages instead of linguistics and one language then, correct? I was thinking that linguistics knowledge might come in handy if I want to learn 5, but you still think it would be smarter just to go after them one at a time. Just don’t want to go wandering around blind!

8

What languages do you already speak? Your best bet is to start with Latin. If you do well with it, Latin would give you the foundation to acquire any of the Romance languages faster.

You don’t need a linguistics department.

9

I hadn’t even thought of that! I am native English, survivalist French at this point, but I am learning more every day. Do you happen to know anything about Sanskrit? Is that like Latin for Asian Languages or is it less relevant? I really will probably only learn one romance language (french) because most other countries that speak romance languages already have a high rate of English fluency. Perhaps Portuguese though.

10

As far as majors, I’d say it depends on what you want to do with your degree. Based on your OP it seems like that would be something related to international studies? Those kinds of programs usually require proficiency in at least one foreign language, so you could fit in a language there. Depending on the program you might be able to fit another language major in there, or a minor. You could use that either to further develop your language choice for international studies or to pick a different language. Mind you, the logistics of something like this would depend a lot on the school.

My experience is that some linguistics knowledge does help a little bit when learning a new language, so if your school offers a couple introductory classes I would look into taking them. Like I said before, it’s more that those types of classes familiarize you with the different kinds of things different languages do and will help you identify what’s going on with languages you’re learning. If your school doesn’t offer it or you can’t fit it into your schedule, don’t worry about it.

The general rule when learning languages is to focus on one at a time, at least until you have the basics of your current one down. It’s easy to get languages confused and hamper your learning if you’re trying to get the basics of multiple languages at the same time. Usually once you get to a more intermediate level (how long that takes depends on the language) you should be fine to start on another one as long as you keep up with your other languages, but as with most things that depends on the person.

Knowledge of Latin word roots is very useful, but actually learning the language isn’t necessary. Instead look into classes on Latin word roots, or something along those lines. Even if you don’t learn other Romance languages, that knowledge is useful in English.

I don’t know too much about Sanskrit-influenced languages myself, so I can’t offer suggestions there.

11

Thanks for your insight into language learning and linguistics knowledge! So I can take whatever I think is best and then shelter under the umbrella of international studies. Sounds like a good fit.

12

Linguistics is not necessary to learn foreign languages. It’s a little like what math is to CS.
To teach ESL you’d need a TESOL certificate. If you want to teach ELLs in K-12 it’s a specific education certificate (not linguistics).
(To teach in some countries such as Japan, Korea, or China, you only need to be a native speaker).
Northeastern Ohio = could you go to Pitt? Not toooo far from Akron etc.
Case Western and John Carroll are the strongest academically overall.
Oberlin or Dickinson would be better for Asian languages (and Dickinson has a great French department + international management). It’s about 4h30 to Akron. Oberlin is about 1 hour to Akron and based on your stats I’m not sure why you’re not considering it (it’s got one of the best Asian language depts in the country).

Why “for the next 3 years”? Are you currently a freshman in college?

13

You do not need to major in a language to learn a language, and also, your major has nothing to do with lifelong language learning.

A major can be a GOOD way to learn a language in college. But post-college, the way you’re going to learn a language is by investing in it yourself - taking online classes, using programs like Rosetta Stone, and/or paying for non-degree classes at a nearby university. That is, of course, unless you work for a job in which learning additional languages is a requirement of the job or one that does tuition reimbursement for whatever you want.

So what you major in really is irrelevant to being a lifelong language learner. What you want to do is select a major that will support your career goals and your interests.

Also, at most colleges, you cannot study abroad in your senior year - at least not both semesters. Some colleges allow you to study abroad first semester senior year, but most do not. Most people who study abroad do so in their junior year. (Maybe you were referring to your senior year in HS.)

You can major in whatever you want. Then perhaps minor in French, or just take the French language classes at whatever language you are in. You can also start on your second language in your sophomore or junior year if you can handle it. I do recommend a less intense major with fewer requirements if you want to seriously study two languages (something like engineering likely wouldn’t be a good choice). You can spend one summer in college, or two, studying in the Southeast Asian country of your choice through a scholarship program. Check out Boren Scholarships and Critical Language Scholarships, which are set up to help Americans learn less commonly taught languages. Korean is a good choice for business; Indonesian is a critical language I’ve seen on lots of lists like the FBI, military, CIA, and both these scholarships. Chinese and Japanese are also critical languages that you can get support for if you are already advanced in these languages before you study abroad. Kent State, John Carroll, and Case Western have Chinese and Japanese; UAkron has Chinese.

(Most of these places also have Arabic. Arabic is another critical language, and that also opens up the opportunity to study abroad in North Africa - countries in which French and Arabic are both spoken widely - like Morocco or Algeria. Algeria is especially so - my French teacher in college was Algerian, and in Algeria 60% of households read or understand French but the official language is Modern Standard Arabic. There are also some Francophone Southeast Asian states like Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, although finding classes for those languages will be an effort.)

*As was already mentioned, a linguistics background does not increase your ability to learn languages with limited resources. Language branching will help with that - like French to Spanish - but also some people are just really good at picking up languages.

14

Thanks for your reply!
Nope, these that I listed are set in STONE, I cannot go ANYWHERE else. The reasons are:
I will be a minor for the next three years and my parents won’t let me move (obviously) and I’m certainly not having a 4 hour commute. Oberlin I can’t do because its too expensive, but it does pain me to pass it up. Yes, I am also a freshmen in college, but I just took Core requirements for state schools in the first semester and I am looking to pick something a little more interesting. Besides, you can’t just take core forever.

I did make a 35 slide powerpoint presentation and manage to get great rides to top schools but they won’t be moving an inch for me, unless some miracle happens. Admittedly, I have changed my hypothetical major enough times for them to doubt the profit of packing up across the country just for a 15 year old.

15

I appreciate the detail here! I am leaning Chinese at this point to complement my French, so my workload isn’t too light. Ok, I guess I won’t pick CSU just because of the linguistics if they aren’t that critical. I’ll take your word for it because it was sort of an assumption that I made with no real basis I guess. Thanks everyone for their help. I think I will make a good choice after I talk with some of the professors and experience the commute and campus :smiley:

16

Are you DUAL ENROLLED (ie., taking college classes but not graduated high school) or did you graduate high schoola at 14 and enroll in college? Because those financial aid packages you saw are for students who are enrolled in high school( whether they take college classes or not) and WILL NOT be available to you if you’re enrolled as a post-HS graduation freshman in college.
Considering your interest in languages, I would suggest you register with a program such as Nacel or YFU and attend high school in another country - China, since you’re learning Chinese. You’d be living in a family and would have to respect the rules of living in an entirely different country and culture.
If that’d be too much of a shock, you could spend a year in France. There’d still be plenty of culture shock but it wouldn’t be as strong as in China.
Or, since you’re 15, you could go next year to France, then the following year to China.
If your parents’ opposition is to living in the dorms with 18+ year olds, knowing you’re in a family and strict-school environment should reassure them. In addition, when you come back, you’ll be able to go to college a bit further.
If this is not possible, I’d stick with Case and John Carroll.

17

Yes, I am dual enrolled at the moment, but I might graduate if I get a great scholarship, which may not be the most likely of events, so I will probably stay dual enrolled. Yeah unfortunately, my parents aren’t going to fly with that either. Interesting note, a Case Professor told me they are going to roll out their fourth year of Chinese Language classes to make a total of 35+ credits worth of pure language instruction. So I’m pretty much favoring Case. They probably have the best faculty, course opportunities, academics, and reputation among my possibilities.

If I wanted to further understand business in Asia, what would you recommend? Case doesn’t have IR or IB. I’m thinking that I will be needing something besides just Aisan Studies/Chinese to make myself marketable. Even if I learn Chinese, there are still 1.3 billion people who know it better than I would probably.

18

Since you’re dual enrolled, can you dual enroll at Case? Take Chinese, French, statistics or applied math, intro to international studies, and principles of macroeconomics, it’ll keep you very busy next semester. :slight_smile:
The management concentration in international business is good as long as it’s coupled with serious language study… and Case has links with China and a strong major as well as a good French program so you should be fine :-).

Float the "hs abroad " idea though, you never know :slight_smile:

19

Yes, I can dual enroll at case! Sounds like we have our problems solved ! Thanks everyone.