Academics
Why language? The reasons are endless.
Language is essential for success in our increasingly global society.
Learning a new language at TCU allows you to stay relevant in a changing world, makes your resume stand out from the crowd, and immerses you in a different culture, giving you a better understanding of how the world works.
Our Mission
The Department of Modern Language Studies prepares students to navigate an increasingly inter-reliant global community through instruction in the languages, culture, and cultural products (film, literature, song texts, etc.) of non-English speaking countries.
The department fosters translingual, transcultural, and diversity competence, employing pedagogies and curricula that emphasize the analysis and rethinking of the positionalities we “naturally” inhabit.
Viewing language as a tool of communication (something to be learned and used), a carrier of culturally determined ideas (something to be analyzed and with which to engage critically), and a window into otherness (something that allows for the creative exploration of alternatives to how we are and could be different), the department promotes contact and exchange between and among cultures and contributes to intercultural and global awareness and sensitivity.
We offer majors and minors in Chinese, French, German, and Italian, and language classes in Japanese as well.
Vision & Values
Vision
The department aims to contribute, in both scholarly and teacherly terms, to the furtherance of transnational and cosmopolitan speaking, writing, reading, and behavioral patterns that encourage openness to cross-cultural and diverse perspectives and a critical distancing from one’s own cultural and/or ideological point of view. In our classes and research, we will mobilize perspective-taking and cosmopolitan reading and prepare students to continue to learn about and appreciate diverse cultures, perspectives, and ideologies in an ever-changing global world.
Values
- To promote student agency and student-centered pedagogies
- To encourage a culture of multilingualism
- To support linguistic and cultural diversity
- To engage students, each other, community members, and campus partners in dialogue about linguistic and cultural diversity and otherness
- To support and develop transnational and cosmopolitan modes of inquiry
Student Learning Outcomes
Students graduating with a degree in Modern Language Studies from the AddRan College of Liberal Arts will be able to:
- Communicate effectively in at least one non-English language in a range of speaking situations and in writing that is understandable to native and near-native speakers
- Formulate hypotheses about and analyze the cultures and practices of at least one non-English speaking culture
- Examine the validity of their own practices and norms by comparing and contrasting them to those of a non-English language speaking culture
- Identify and value the diversity of human experience and their own particular positionality in a multicultural, multiethnic world