ABSTRACT
Language defines the culture and identity of a person. We are what we speak. Children learn their mother tongue by picking up cues in the environment around them. Most linguistic processes happen at an unconscious level. Speakers do not intentionally look for a noun, verb, and object when formulating a sentence in their mother tongue. What we speak connects us to our family, neighborhood, and community. Language enables us to be social beings, but also it can become a barrier that divides us from people who do not speak our language. Learning foreign languages has therefore been one of the most fundamental humanist projects in the history of education, and it belongs to the core mission of most liberal arts curricula. In many colleges and universities, students cannot graduate without fulfilling a foreign language requirement.
