Hi all,
I am interested in majoring in either multiple foreign languages or double majoring in a foreign language and something else. I am also hoping to find a friendly school with small class sizes! Also, any non-traditional foreign languages would be a huge plus. My ACT is in the 25-29 range. Any suggestions?
There are lots of good schools for foreign languages. Middlebury was the first to come to mind, but they don’t have many non-traditional/critical languages offered there, and a 25-29 ACT won’t make you very competitive there.
What kinds of languages are you interested in learning? Your state’s flagship public university might have very good offerings in languages. Public universities are larger and often have more resources for lots of languages.
Is there any university on earth that can come remotely close to the breadth offered by Brigham Young University? BYU offers more than 80 languages-- yes, that zero after the eight isn’t a typo…
Wow, that’s awesome! It must be because of the LDS church’s missionary work and their need to teach Mormon students languages before they go abroad.
However, I’d check and make sure how many of those 80 languages are offered regularly. For example, under Afrikaans, there’s a note that says “The Center for Language Studies will offer beginning courses in Afrikaans during Fall and Winter Semesters if a qualified teacher and sufficient student interest can be found.” The same note is there for Albanian, Armenian, Basque, Catalan, Dutch and a lot of the other more obscure/less commonly-taught languages.
The languages BYU regularly offers and has a full range of classes for are Arabic, American Sign Language, Cantonese, Mandarin, Danish (not a full range but a number of classes), Finnish (see Danish), French, German, classical Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic (see Danish), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norse, Norwegian (see Danish), Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish (see Danish), and Welsh. Still a large range of classes.
Indiana used to brag that it offered 84 languages, though a current count indicates somewhere around 48. Rough counts at some other universities: UCLA (70}; Wisconsin (64); Berkeley (51); Michigan (50); Harvard (49 + arranged tutorials in 33 others, mostly African languages); Cornell (45); U Washington (41); Columbia (39); and, Ohio State (39).
Thanks everyone!!! That’s all great information! Have any of you heard of Elon University? Do you think that it would have good foreign language instructions??