<p>Heh, see that was what I was thinking, mini.</p>
<p>literatus, I'm not trying to give you a hard time (well, maybe a little), but why would you think that the skill set that produces quality work on Spanish baroque poetry or African post-colonial fiction would make a good introductory/intermediate language instructor? In a college or university setting, teaching the basics of a mainstream modern language is sort of scut work. Regardless of who is nominally in charge of a course, I think everywhere the heavy lifting is mainly done by TA-type instructors (often native speakers, sometimes grad students in other departments or even undergraduates) hired for that purpose. I may be wrong -- maybe some LACs do have full faculty members drilling grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, but I can't imagine they are too thrilled about it.</p>
<p>How can the raw numbers be irrelevant when you are comparing apples and oranges? LAC's don't have engineering and business and education and a host of other programs common at large universities. None of these folks go on to a PhD in English under most scenarios. Compare the large with the large and the small with the small but going across types leads to meaningless info. If you want some meaningful comparisons find out how many applied to graduate programs from each school and then you can compare % admitted. That might have some useful meaning.</p>
<p>Well JHS, I don't know about everyone interested in such a profession, but I, for one, tend to enjoy "grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation." That may be totally irrelevant, but it does prove that some people don't consider such tasks as being beneath them.</p>
<p>In that case, literatus, you won't be happy in a major university. Because no university would waste professors' time teaching grammar. No professor would WANT to teach grammar. They are there to teach literature, literary theory, critical approaches to written texts. You may want to visit a college and sit in on some classes to get a sense of how academia works to avoid disappointment.</p>
<p>I enjoy grammar, vocabulary, and syntax (not so much pronunciation), too. But that's not what college French, Spanish, etc. professors do, for the most part. Or English, History, whatever professors. Some do, of course, and it is of interest in Education Schools and, to a lesser extent, Linguistics departments. </p>
<p>If that's really what you are interested in, you should look hard at Middlebury. It's a fine LAC which has a traditional specialty in language instruction, where its program is the gold standard going back 50-60 years. Because of that, it attracts a lot of students who are interested in language study, and its related literature and culture offerings are far richer than most LACs can offer, especially taking into account its super-successful summer programs which draw faculty from all over the world.</p>
<p>Look into Comparative Literature programs. Comp Lit leads to a career in teaching literature, but trains you in at least 2 national literatures/languages and various ways of thinking about literature (more various than in an English program). Some noted programs: Cornell, Yale, UC Irvine, UCLA, Emory.</p>
<p>How about Vassar?</p>
<p>I realize that this thread is pretty old, but someone out there might find this useful...</p>
<p>Good language schools: Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, (insert pretty much any other large public school here), Beloit, Pittsburgh, Dickinson, St. Olaf, Grinnell. I've heard fantastic comments about Middlebury's summer programs--after all, they get the absolute best professors to teach there--but few of those professors actually teach at the school year-round. That's not to say it's not a good school for languages, it's just that the language schools make it sound better than it really is.</p>
<p>Grammar/vocabulary/syntax = linguistics. Good schools for Linguistics include UChicago, Berkeley, UCLA, UMass-Amherst, Arizona, Ohio State, UIUC, SUNY Stony Brook/Buffalo. You're not going to find much in the way of Linguistics programs at smaller schools. Maybe a class or two in the English department (or, say, a French Linguistics class in the French department). It's also a more scientific field. I find that people tend to love it or hate it. If you aren't that bad at Math and Science, you might like it.</p>
<p>Comparative Literature covers a lot more than just two or three literatures. You compare different periods of time, entire bodies of work by different authors, the social/historical context behind the novels--everything. The more languages you know the better off you'll be. It's a very fascinating field, although very broad. I suspect this is probably what the OP was thinking of. For Comp Lit... study English, Linguistics, languages. A lot of larger English programs have specific threads of study--e.g. Comp. Lit, American Lit, Brit Lit, etc. You probably don't want to major in this in undergrad; it's more of a grad school specialization than anything else. Of course, YMMV.</p>