Rob Brown MODL Final Research Paper
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School
University of Texas, Arlington *
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Course
2301
Subject
Linguistics
Date
Jan 9, 2024
Type
docx
Pages
3
Uploaded by SargentStar6479
Rob Brown
12/4/23
MODL 2301-001
Final Paper
Final Project Individual Paper
In this final paper, I will be reflecting on several key questions and discussion points that were brought up throughout this course and several key questions that cover the final group project. I will inspect several key questions about the project, including what our group researched and interesting findings, what I learnt along the way of completing the project and how I would conduct my group research differently in the future and some challenges that our group faced along the way. First, my small group of three researched a very interesting topic about how public and private higher institutions of education handle foreign language studies for its’ students and what it offers and how it varies from private to public colleges across our focused area of Dallas. We began our study by researching polls, surveys and general information regarding public colleges across Dallas like the UT branches, University of North Texas and other colleges and compared their offerings to several private colleges like SMU, Baptist and other schools across Dallas. We used survey questions, polls utilized by those schools to see how many students returned to study
foreign languages in college and other miscellaneous information on student choices such as if more students are returning and taking foreign language or if there is less participation across universities in general foreign language studies. We found out that many students are engaging less and less in foreign language studies than years prior, and on top of that there seems to be a growing sentiment that students who do not follow up and continue to take foreign language
classes add that it impacts their overall college experience, job offerings and even satisfaction after graduating, some even mentioning that they’ve missed out on key life events because of lack of engagement with and opportunities because lack of proficiency in a foreign language. Following up with this research introduction, we found that overall, both public and private colleges are offering less and less in the way of foreign language classes, and that both more students are mentioning a feeling of missing out on certain life opportunities because of the lack of experience they have, or don’t have, because of not continuing their education with a foreign language. A key takeaway I learned was that overall, nationally, statewide and even locally in Dallas, foreign language studies has seen a noticeable decrease, trickling all the way down into local high schools where similar impacts are felt amongst high school and newly graduated students before they even begin to attend colleges. I thought this sentiment was interesting because it was shared by so many students across Dallas and all of Texas, that foreign language practically offers new life experiences, knowledge, relationships and even work opportunities and so many more untapped abilities, besides just learning a second language. This sentiment echoed throughout those interviewed and polled, yet I will add that I share a similar sentiment that learning a foreign language to proficiency has had a much larger impact than I would have ever understood at face value, where I use my knowledge of Spanish almost daily interacting with customers at my job or even between my friends and fellow employees at my job. Without my knowledge and ability to speak both languages, I believe my work and life experiences would be much different if I didn’t have a foreign language to rely on for my life or job. Last, while conducting our research and finalizing our research project, looking back, there are several key differences I would have enacted while completing this project. First, I would have opened the scope of our research well beyond just Dallas, I would have expanded to all North
Texas. Likewise, some limitations were the scale, we had to keep the group project relatively small so it wouldn’t become a six-week project or become too large to complete within our small
group. Another key limitation was the research itself, with the drop off of foreign language in universities being a relatively new phenomenon, this made gathering polls, surveys and general, reputable information surprisingly difficult and obscure to obtain. There was generally more information about this problem on a national scale, however little research has been unearthed in just Texas, and even less for Dallas. So, the novelty of this issue of the past several generations studying foreign languages less being such a new issue, the small scale actually being more of a challenge to itself for our project, and the almost interpersonal impact on each individual person interviewed even more challenging.
Throughout this research topic, my small group dove deep into the new issue of the steady decline of students participating in foreign language studies across private and public colleges and the impacts this had across Texas, and more in particular, Dallas. Through conducting research on a collegiate level, we used polls, interviews and batch tests of universitates offering new foreign language classes or removing them from their catalogues, and general student sentiment about foreign languages. Overall, I greatly enjoyed delving into this project with my fellow teammates, and greatly cherished the challenges that group work often brings, and equally
satisfying camaraderie and fun of working project to completion was the general sentiment I had and shared with our group as a whole.
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