<p>How come he turned down the job offer?</p>
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<p>the job he ws offered(in japan) (he wasnt offered a navy teaching job cause they want tri lingaul speakers or more)
he turned down the japan one cause it pay like 320000 yen a month...
roughly 30,000 usd a year
(it gets better the more u work, and rooming is done with other people...since tokyo city life can get expensive)
but i mean they do have better jobs.</p>
<p>Like if ur interested in any foreign jobs in japan
he told me to check out this site
<a href="http://www.gaijinpot.com%5B/url%5D">www.gaijinpot.com</a></p>
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<p>there is also the Japanese English Teaching program (JET) that anyone can do after a bachelor's. </p>
<p>i think another important thing is the variance in the way different foreign language classes are structured. after intermediate level, romance language classes become very similar to English courses. you read books and use other media, discuss them, and write essays. classical languages are about the same all the way through, and focus much more on literature translation and grammar. they teach you very different styles of learning language, as you can see from Katharos's post.</p>
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<p>My son is very good at lanquages, but I think he's going to look at psychology instead. Anyway, we looked into a few options besides teaching (lanquages) and one thing that turned up is the govt agency thing, specifically the NSA, National Security Agency. I think these are the guys who do the "terrorist surveillance", ie, monitoring phone calls, email, etc. Their web site says they need speakers of all lanquages, but have a pressing need of speakers of Chinese and Arabic dialects. They will pay for you to go to school to learn these two and other "high need" lanquages. The impression I got was that the NSA would pay for an undergrad degree anywhere you got in that had the major in exchange for a certain number of years that you agree to work for them. There is a lot of info on their web site.</p>
<p>Also, the NSA and the CIA, FBI all recruited at my D1's school, LSU Honors College, looking for foreign lanquage majors and math majors.</p>
<p>On a non-military note, my kid's two high schools are often desperately in need of a good Latin teacher. The girls' school lost an excellent guy who was teaching high school while pursuing Latin grad school at LSU. He left 'cause he got a fellowship/scholarship thing to live in Rome and study advanced Latin and Roman civilization. They are paying him to do that. One of S's hs friends wants to major in Latin. At the boys school they learn tons of history in Latin and enjoy that aspect in addition to the obivous help with english and SATs.</p>
<p>Then there is always linquistics and the possibilities of branching out in that direction.</p>
<p>For Spanish, the speech therapy schools are desperate for people who are fluent and want to teach in the public schools, esplly out west.</p>
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<p>
[quote]
Japanese English Teaching program (JET)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, it's the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. :p</p>
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<p>JET is very, very hard to get in to. If you want to teach abroad that badly, look into other options (e.g. the French Teaching Assistantship program, teaching in China or Korea, etc).</p>
<p>Majoring in a foreign language is pretty much just majoring in English, with the benefit of more opportunities upon graduation. Some language majors are more literature-intensive than others; Russian is especially renowned for this. Mmm, Bulgakov.</p>
<p>To do almost anything with linguistics, you need to go to grad school & you need luck. Please keep in mind that linguistics is COMPLETELY different from learning a foreign language. It's a much more scientific subject--I'd liken it more to the Social Sciences as opposed to the Humanities. Linguistics is the sort of field that you either love or hate. I definitely recommend taking an Intro Linguistics course--even if you hate it, it will come in useful for language students.</p>
<p>Speech-Language Pathology (i.e. speech therapy) IS in need of Spanish speakers. As in, if you want a job and you speak Spanish, get into that field ASAP. However, much like Linguistics, this is a more scientific field & very, very broad. To be an SLP, it's required by law that you have a graduate degree, and you have to fulfill a whole host of other requirements that vary depending on the state.</p>
<p>RE: the government paying to get language majors through college/to work for them: look up NSEP Boren programs on Google. They'll pay for you to study for a year in a foreign country if you promise to spend 5 years working for them. Nice if you want to go into politics, but bad if you're like me and incredibly indecisive.</p>
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<p>atmjunk,</p>
<p>I dunno that JET is "very very hard" to get into. I'd say that for a program whose goal is to teach English, its requirements are actually pretty low.</p>
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<p>Does anyone know of scholarships for undergraduate study of foreign language not specifically targeted for study abroad?</p>
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<p>UCLAri, from my (admittedly limited) experience, JET is relatively difficult to get into. I have several friends who have applied at various points over the last few years, and the only one who was accepted didn't know a word of Japanese.</p>
<p>I've heard that the JET program more readily accepts non-fluent teachers because they're more likely to leave after their contract is up. On the other hand, fluent teachers are more likely to work for a competing school after their contract expires. (Disclaimer: I've heard this from several different sources since I began researching TEFL programs. No idea if it's true or not, just repeating what I've heard.) eslcafe.com is a good site for TEFL jobs.</p>
<p>map, check out your (prospective?) college. When applying to colleges, I received foreign language scholarships from two or three different schools. If you find any national scholarships, be sure to let me know. ;)</p>
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<p>atmjunk,</p>
<p>Most of the people I knew who did JET had either studied Japanese or knew it already. </p>
<p>As far as the accepting non-fluent teachers because they leave, I don't think that's true. People who go work for schools that don't get English teachers from JET have no effect whatsoever on the mission of the program, so that seems like an odd reason to me. CLAIR (JET's parent org.) couldn't care less what you do after you complete your contract as long as you don't affect their goals. Going to some private school to teach doesn't affect them, so they don't care.</p>
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<p>new topic: which schools are best for foreign languages in general (nothing for specific language departments)"</p>
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<p>Middlebury College.</p>
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<p>Indiana University
University of Wisconsin - Madison
University of Chicago
University of Texas - Ausin
University of Michigan
University of Virginia
University of Minnesota (one of the few schools to offer degrees in Scandinavian languages)
University of Illinois in Chicago (fantastic for Slavic/Baltic languages)
University of Nevada - Reno (only school that offers several years of Basque)
Beloit
St. Olaf
Grinnell
Reed
Dickinson
and, for you boring elitists out there, most of the UC schools, Ivy's, and top LACs/publics are pretty good too... I guess. :P</p>
<p>The thing with language programs is that just because a school is great for, say, Spanish, doesn't mean its Russian program is amazing. Or vice versa. Take a look at the language department at the school of your choice. Look at how many professors are teaching there. See how many courses are actually being taught every semester. Check out the study abroad/exchange programs.</p>
<p>The more obscure the language, the bigger the school will have to be. Indiana has an amazing selection of languages (ranging from run of the mill German or Japanese to Estonian, Tajik, and Yoruba). Grinnell doesn't have anything even remotely near that number of languages, but what they do offer is taught very, very well.</p>
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<p>So I am a sophomore at Harvard and currently a Near Eastern Languages and Civ concentrator, though I am changing my concentration to religion (comparative Islam/Christianity with a focus on early religious communities and womens' roles in religion). </p>
<p>I currently study Arabic, Persian, and Spanish, and speak French, Italian, and English. I have studied all of them at some point during college, but the schedule's just don't allow enough room for lots of language each semester (and its kind of miserable when you try). </p>
<p>I decided to be a language concentrator because it was something I liked, was relatively good at, and could see myself doing for a while. (Fluency in arabic requires a lot of years of study). I'm now switching because I've realized that while I want to continue learning languages (I've about 4 more on my list), I don't want that to be my main focus; I would rather learn languages for the sake of applying them to another field of study than learn them just to study language and literature. Religion allows me to do this, since it exists everywhere and my interest is inthe development of communities. Basically, I was studying Arabic, Persian, and some Islam, and now I'm studying how language, culture, and religion interact all around the globe and specifically in the Middle East. </p>
<p>As for jobs, I have no idea what I want to do. I'm not really that interested in government work, but I like journalism and humanitarian type work so I might go down that path. I just know that I want to live overseas and be able to pursue other interests (photography and rock climbing). For internships, though, thats pretty easy. I studied arabic in cairo last summer, and currently work in the Islamic Art program of Harvard's art museums. This summer, I will probably teach english abroad (latin america or egypt) or work for lets go travel guides. I'm taking next year off to do climbing and photography for a semester and then going to either syria or lebanon to work, probably teaching english and working with either an arts or culture thing there through work connections. </p>
<p>hope this helps... any questions are welcome :)</p>
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<p>I'm a senior in high school, and I'm going into college in the fall with a Modern Foreign Languages major. I'm also going to minor in Psychology and do some research on Linguistics, particularly those of French & Spanish. I'm also going to take some Chinese and eventually an African language. Then I'm going to grad school to get a Ph.D. in Linguistics. After that, I want to go overseas (probably Africa, maybe with the Peace Corps) for a couple of years and teach ESL. Then...I don't know. I'm planning on figuring something out in the next 4-8+ years. It's not really a lack of choices that's my problem--actually, it's quite the opposite. I'm so interested in everything, so I don't know what to pick after all this education. I'm assuming that I'll become passionate about one area and do that for a career. </p>
<p>Oh, and I'm doing foreign languages because I love them. They're fun. I pick them up very quickly, and I like knowing how they work and how they develop (hence the interest in Linguistics).</p>
<p>If you want to major in a foreign language, don't worry about opportunities afterward. There will be plenty. Just do what you love.</p>
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<p>^ ditto</p>
<p>Ive been studying French, German, Spanish at school and I can speak them rather well; I can also speak korean and japanese. Would it be better to just major in Linguistics than one of them? I love them all, and they all came to me quickly. Its the only thing that I'm really good at. When I go to college (im a high school junior) i plan on majoring in linguistics and minoring in sociology (?).</p>
<p>I started out as a French Studies major at the American University of Paris. I decided I wanted to study politics instead, so I made it my minor. Living in France has clearly helped my French, though. It's cultural reinforcement outside of the classroom, which is fun, because then you get to learn all of the slang that kids your age would say. :)</p>
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<p>Sorry, I forgot to put this in my last post, but my school is incredibly international so even if you want to learn a language other than French, it's more convenient because you have a lot of native speakers as undergrads. I hear Arabic, German, Swedish, Spanish, French (of course), Italian, Romanian, Russian, Hebrew (sometimes) on a regular basis... it just takes confidence to go up to your fellow classmates and try to make some friendly conversation in their first language, I suppose. The best practice is, of course, actually using the language.</p>
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<p>I've got a question about this: We talk about Chinese and Economic double majors being knockouts, but when I go to school, I just plan to take a couple years of a few different languages (I love languages). Will employers be able to see that I am multi-lingual, or will it be far less important because I didn't major in a language?</p>