The mission of the Languages and Cultures Department is to build, support, and enhance a teaching and learning community through instruction, scholarship, service, and community outreach in the area of languages, cultures, and international studies.

Goals and Objectives

Guided by the above, we aim at enabling our students to achieve the following five goals at graduation:

1. Development of professional and marketable mastery of communicative skills in one or more languages other than English;

2. Appropriation of linguistic skills, transferable selectively to a wide range of practical options, including – but not limited to – mass media, higher education, travel/leisure enterprises, the performing arts, teaching, diplomacy, law enforcement, military intelligence, the space program, business/marketing, international banking, politics, the Peace Corps;

3. Acquisition of knowledge of, and sensitivity about, one or more literary and cultural heritages/traditions other than those of English-speaking communities;

4. Internalization of the principle of diversity as one of the cornerstones of personal, national and international relationships, and promotion of its inherent values in the world at large;

5. Achievement of a high degree of information literacy, by accessing national and international sources, and judicious evaluation of the same for form, value and content.

Student Learning Outcomes

1. To understand and produce oral communications at an advanced level in the target language, demonstrating the ability to analyze and critically discuss cultural, literary and/or linguistic topics. Students will be able to interact successfully in a variety of practical and academic situations.

2. To develop advanced proficiency in the written expression of the target language, demonstrating the ability to analyze and critically discuss cultural, literary and/or linguistic topics with fluent and coherent organization, a sophisticated range of vocabulary, complex language constructions, and mastery of mechanics.

3. To develop advanced proficiency in reading comprehension, in order to be able to analyze and interpret authentic texts from the target language and culture.

4. To achieve the necessary target cultural literacy in order to analyze and interpret cultural and literary texts and traditions as they emerge from their context; and, by exposing the students to competing narratives, they will develop the foundation for a pluralistic cultural literacy.