What is unremarkable about this classroom is the presence of students, a professor and bookbags. What is remarkable is that the class is meeting in a small room of a charming little house on Alexander Drive--a house where the smell of South Asian cuisine permeates the air and a foreign film plays on the corner television. The most distinctive feature of the room, though, is the enthusiasm and familiarity apparent in the voices of the professor and students during their pre-class discussion. The welcoming atmosphere leads an observer to wonder: Is this a classroom or a family gathering?
The building at 306 Alexander Drive, on the stretch of land between East and West campuses, is where a portion of the Asian and African languages and literature department makes its home. The building itself--cramped, distant from other academic buildings, yet instantly inviting--embodies the nature of the AALL department and of many of Duke's less-taught language programs.
That these programs subsist and thrive in small intellectual enclaves at Duke is not a matter of chance. Lacking vast financial support and huge enrollments, these programs are buoyed by the active enthusiasm of the participants.
Size Matters
When deciding how best to fulfill the Curriculum 2000 language requirement, students may be aware that languages taught at the high school level have obvious advantages. Many students have already had experience with these languages, larger pools of speakers are available for interaction and larger programs mean more course options.
The Spanish and Latin American studies program, for example, offers more than 30 classes each semester. The program is both large, with over 600 students enrolled in Spanish courses, and stable, with two Duke-In study abroad programs and 44 faculty members. For some, the choice to stay with a common language seems clear.
Hundreds of students, though, are attracted to exotic tongues precisely because they are so different and because they have their own charm and flavor.
"Some students want to learn a language which is very different from European languages.... Others are attracted by the culture," says Carolyn Lee, coordinator of the Chinese program. Chinese is one of seven languages within AALL; the others are Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Swahili.
The majority of less-taught languages are not based on the familiar Roman alphabet. Additionally, the cultures associated with languages like Russian, Chinese, Hindi, and Swahili present a world vastly different from the familiar Western world.
Although these language programs are more limited in size than their more common counterparts, diminutive program size is not always a drawback, especially when assessing language instruction. In these small programs, students and faculty often share an eagerness that can lead to great results when coupled with individual interaction and attention.
"The greatest strength [of the Hindi program]... is the enthusiasm the students bring to the classroom," says Mekhala Natavar, assistant professor of the practice in the Hindi program. "We are able to cover all the grammar and vocabulary lessons expected for each level of Hindi, but because our students tend to be very smart and committed to learning Hindi, we are able to spend a lot of our class time engaging in alternative learning techniques such as dialogues, skits, [and] song presentations."
Across the board, instructors tout student enthusiasm as a major reason for the success of less-taught language programs. In turn, students appreciate the intellectual intimacy of a small program.
A House Divided
While a small program has its benefits, there are also drawbacks to be addressed. Positive experiences and anecdotes are easy to come by, but does the University support the lesser-taught languages as well as it could? Many professors complain that more faculty members are needed to properly support the current student interest in these language programs.
"We would definitely like to have more faculty members," Lee says. Currently, three professors teach the 91 students enrolled in Chinese languages courses.
Space and location constraints are also evident. For example, the AALL department is currently housed in two buildings, and finding physical space in which to conduct class can be a challenge. "The situation is not ideal," says Professor Satendra Khanna of the Hindi program.
The plight of the Yiddish program is one example of how smaller language programs might disappear altogether. Instructor Sheva Zucker was unable to offer an introductory Yiddish class this semester because of administrative restrictions. The situation, she says, makes maintaining even a small program difficult, not to mention adhering to a new Yiddish enrollment requirement imposed by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature.
"Usually, five to six students take [Yiddish 1].... Next year if I offer it, I have to have 20 students," Zucker says. "This is a completely unrealistic figure if you check Yiddish enrollments at other universities."
Zucker's only student this semester, Leigh Spoon, is enthusiastic about the class and the language.
"I've really enjoyed it," says Spoon, who would like to continue learning the language if it is offered in the future. "I'd recommend it to anyone."
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"I have seen a drop in enrollment this year.... There was some uneasiness when [students] knew that Eric left," she says. "There is absolutely room for a bigger program. It is really a matter of stability. The tenured position for a Hebrew professor must be filled, and in the very least the commitment to having a Hebrew language teacher needs to be made permanent.... Under these conditions, the program will grow."
Furthermore, the breadth of languages offered at Duke is far more narrow than at institutions of similar size and academic reputation.
Junior Chintan Maru, who is in Khanna's Contemporary Culture in South Asia class, says that while he is definitely interested in learning more about South Asia, he would like more language options in addition to Hindi. Specifically, Maru would like to see Gujarati among the course offerings.
"I know many Duke students whose mother tongue is Gujarati," he says. "And our peer schools have programs."
Duke offers courses in 19 languages, and while Duke students can study such languages as Tamil, Bengali or Farsi by enrolling in classes at other Triangle-area universities, none of these languages are included in Curriculum 2000. In contrast, Yale University offers over 50 languages, and Stanford University's Special Language Program goes to even further lengths to accommodate student interest by allowing students to request languages not normally offered.
At Duke, steps are being taken to provide additional language support, but these changes are small in scope and may not be immediately realized.
"The University has committed to hiring a senior faculty member [in the Chinese program] this year," says Lee, who feels the program needs at least one more full-time person, preferably two full-time faculty.
Duke's long-range plan, Building on Excellence, emphasizes language learning as a way of extending the University's global reach and influence.
According to the document detailing the long-range plan, "It is through the window of international exchanges, built on the acquisition of languages and the experiences gained abroad, that students can compare themselves with others, examine the extent to which they are culture-bound and explore the insights of those from other cultures who see the world through different lenses." The plan also lists specific actions to meet its goals. However, none of these actions mention expansion or diversification of current language offerings.
Critics argue that the less-taught languages are also less spoken, less practical or less important.
However, in addition to the counter-example that 800 million people in China alone speak Mandarin Chinese--nearly three times the number who speak Spanish worldwide--the modern world's increased interdependence of economic and political systems make knowledge of less-taught languages, such as Chinese, all the more valuable.
Plesser says Hebrew and Israeli culture are "all the more important now because [of Israel's] unique and unfortunate situation." Political awareness is one useful result of learning another language.
"I feel that a world-class university needs to prioritize traditions of pluralism in the world, and we need to understand better inherently pluralistic cultures because they are world resources," says Khanna, who feels that the lack of support is not just a matter of finances. "As a university, we are not exploring diversity of ways of knowing. It has to do with the intellectual tone."
Diskin Clay, a professor of classical studies who teaches ancient Greek, says, "[Language] is the only real access to a culture. When you translate you assimilate another culture to your own."
Like Clay, Khanna dismisses the concern that learning a less-spoken language is impractical or a waste of resources. He sees language acquisition as crucial for true understanding of a vastly different philosophy.
"Each culture has a different idea of practicality," he says. "The culture I come from says that to be practical is to understand your gifts and live out of them."
Motives to study
Although professors may provide answers to the question of why learning a less-taught language is valuable, the source of student interest is not as easy to pin down. Student motivations for studying less-taught languages are as varied as the course offerings themselves.
Plesser explains that Hebrew students come from all sorts of areas and have all sorts of interests. "Some would like to read secondary resources to understand Biblical Hebrew," she says. "[Some are] just curious... [and some are] kids of a Jewish background. A lot of our students are heritage students.... Some want to make grandma happy."
Sophomore Duncan Grimshaw represents another type of student motivation. "My [Japanese] class is pretty good.... It gets the job done. In high school, I took Spanish for four years. I decided to try something different," says Grimshaw, who plans to minor in Japanese. "If nothing else, that's definitely something good on the resumé."
Cultural interest drives much of the current student interest in Japanese, says Hitomi Endo, associate professor of the practice and coordinator of the Japanese program.
"We used to have more students during the early 90s, when the Japanese economy was very good," Endo says. "But student motivation is more diverse than before, especially because of popular culture.... They are familiar with animation and video games. There are not a large number of heritage students.... Chinese and Korean have more heritage students."
Ancestry plays an important role in language enrollment decisions, and heritage students do comprise a large portion of many less-taught language courses.
While some choose to explore the rigors of a new language, other students connect with these departments by enrolling in culturally-based classes. "I hadn't yet taken any classes at Duke relating to South Asian culture or politics, [and] being South Asian myself I am definitely interested in [the subject matter]," Maru says.
Even a language that does not have modern native speakers has its own appeal.
"Students often become interested in Greek literature and want to read original texts [such as] the New Testament.... I suppose it has a certain snob appeal," Clay says. "We have heritage students, but not as many as you'd expect."
The cultural activities associated with these languages are also vital to maintaining interest in the programs, among both heritage and non-heritage students.
"Our students perform short dramas, comedies, dances and songs at least twice a semester, sometimes on campus and sometimes at my own home," Natavar says. "Many of them bring friends to these events who then become attracted to the fun, open and exciting atmosphere of the class as exhibited by the students during the performances. South Asian food [also] attracts both non-heritage and heritage students."
The less-taught language programs are effective despite their small size and limited support, a testament to the dedication of students and faculty who have worked to build a home for interests and cultures at the University. The challenge now is to move these works-in-progress beyond 306 Alexander Drive in order to expand and integrate them into the larger space of the University.