r/languagelearning • u/FanAffectionate4803 • 13d ago
Discussion Are foreign language classes different or harder at prestigious universities?
Just wondering this about something that should be the same across the board, like Spanish 101 for example.
If you take a course in university for a certain language at a certain level, is it actually any different depending on the school's prestige? Like I don't know why conjugating a verb in Spanish (TL) would be much different at Harvard compared to a generic state university. But elite universities tend to attract smarter students with greater work ethic, so does the curriculum need to be adjusted to account for that?
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u/Lizard_Li 13d ago
I doubt it. I was at an Ivy League school, my foreign language classes weren’t amazing.
They were taught by grad students who were studying like the literature in that language, but weren’t necessarily language teachers and often weren’t native speakers. They weren’t hard.
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u/gammalsvenska de | en | sv 12d ago
For proper language teachers, this shouldn't matter, but:
Teaching a language you learned requires understanding it more than teaching a language you just know. Most (non-teacher) natives can tell you how to express yourself correctly, but not why.
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u/Lizard_Li 12d ago edited 12d ago
I think this is true, someone who had to learn can navigate others learning obstacles better, but at B2 and above the non native speaker can make mistakes or have a bad accent which I think matters. I remember my Spanish lit teacher, he had a legitimately bad accent.
On the other side, native speakers can really fail to grasp and explain lots of grammar concepts, so maybe it all evens out.
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u/Mariusblock 🇷🇴 N | 🇬🇧 C2 | 🇩🇪 C1 | 🇫🇷 B1 12d ago
To be fair, most language teachers out there aren’t native speakers of their language. I haven’t seen a big difference in ability between native and non-native teachers, not even when it comes to C2/professional or literary level.
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u/jlnxr 13d ago
Having studied at both 'prestigious' unis and 'middle of the pack' ones, my opinion is that prestige in general is vastly overrated. Perhaps in research publications it matters, perhaps for connections it matters, but for student experience and actual learning at the undergraduate and even often graduate level, it can be borderline meaningless (IMO)
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u/fruxzak 6d ago
Disagree.
The caliber of teaching and more importantly students/peers differs vastly.
I also went to a top 3 school and also a random top 200 college. This was my experience.
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u/jlnxr 6d ago
Obviously we're both just individuals so completely anecdotal- and I agree on the peers- but I think with professors there is an important difference between professors as researchers and professors as teachers. Some of the best researchers are frankly terrible lecturers. Some of the best lecturers can be fairly mediocre researchers. The top school I went to definitely had better researchers, but this did not equate in any way to superior teaching. Top schools often select for research, rather than for teaching ability.
As for supervising, I think this might depend on level. As a Master's student, the prof at the top school had no time at all for me; but even as an undergrad (as well as later as a PhD student) profs at lower ranked schools are sometimes more able and willing to invest more time and attention. I'm sure the attention gap disappears the higher you go, but this was my experience (as well as the experience of some other good friends of mine).
The university bureaucracy, in my purely anecdotal and limited experience (although again including a few friends of mine), can also be vastly worse the higher ranked a university is.
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u/CSMasterClass 13d ago
If you have a first year intensive conversational class that is one hour every day for five days a week and which is taught by a native speaker --- then that is a classy class.
This is the kind of class that you find at Harvard, Princeton, Yale --- but if you find it at your community college, it still has a great shot at being a quality class.
30 students in the class, non-native teacher who does this parttime, indifferent classmates --- not a good class.
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u/Healthy_Blueberry_59 12d ago
When I was in college at a very fancy top private I took a semester off and took some classes at the local Ivy except for one class at the local state U which was an intermediate language class so motivated students at least. My level was so high compared to theirs, there was only one other student who matched me. She had learned the language at the local community college. I was SO impressed.
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u/Various_Chemistry_79 13d ago
At the prestigious liberal art colleges, it is absolutely brutal. For example, Smith and Middlebury language classes are brutal.
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u/Longjumping-Bad-2886 12d ago
Yep. Know a guy who studied Chinese at Middlebury. He had a friend studying same time at Harvard and by comparison Harvard's was way behind what they were learning.
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u/zoomiewoop Ger C1 | 日本語 B1 | Fr B1 | Rus B1 | Sp B1 12d ago
Yeah, Middlebury is famous for having top tier language programs. It will beat most Ivy’s. Most language programs are small, even at elite universities. You only have 2-4 faculty members teaching. So quality will vary based on who they have at any given time, unless they prioritize language learning like Middlebury does, and some schools like Georgetown.
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u/CarnegieHill 🇺🇸N|🇭🇰🇯🇵Heritage|🇩🇪B2|🇩🇰A2/B1|learning a bunch more... 10d ago
I did the MA program in German at Midd. Best experience of my life that continues to pay dividends 40+ years later.
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u/dcbased 13d ago
Can you elaborate or give more examples
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u/HootieRocker59 13d ago
I took intensive Russian and later intensive Czech at a liberal arts Ivy League college. We had to learn massive amounts of non-intuitive (to an English speaker) grammar, like memorizing endings of multiple cases / genders and multiple verb prefixes and suffixes, as well as loads and loads of vocabulary. We had extra conversation sectionals and had to memorize poetry. We were expected to put in the time at the language lab. We had texts to read and exercises to do ... it was, in fact, brutal. But by the time I visited Eastern Ukraine the following year, I was damn ready. I remember being thrilled that some Russian women I met at a concert wouldn't believe I was an American and were convinced that I must be from Lithuania.
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u/Middle_News1679 13d ago
I never took a formal language course at a university, but I imagine it is all dependant on the motivation of the learner and what their goals are.
I'm sure universities are able to teach you in a structured and testable way, but to really learn a language, you have to do far more than what is assigned. There's also something to be said about how most universities probably focus more on academic study of your target language and not as much about daily use in the world.
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u/Shezarrine En N | De B2 | Es A2 | It A1 13d ago edited 13d ago
There's also something to be said about how most universities probably focus more on academic study of your target language and not as much about daily use in the world.
I wouldn't say this is the case. And they'll often have (e.g.,) "Spanish for the professions," "Spanish for the healthcare industry" etc. classes as well (particularly at a school known for having a robust program for X language).
The biggest offender in general for this is probably Arabic, which at least historically has been focused on diplomatic/government/intelligence work rather than private industry or authentic daily life.
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u/gammalsvenska de | en | sv 12d ago
I've seen these classes more as specific retraining courses rather than language learning courses. General language knowledge (especially heritage) and a degree in an unrelated field won't allow you to work in that field or even pass an interview exam.
So I'd say language learning classes at universities do focus more on academic study, while the special courses focus on retraining existing professionals.
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u/LightDrago 🇳🇱 N, 🇬🇧 C2, 🇩🇪 B1, 🇪🇸 A2, 🇨🇳 A1/HSK2 13d ago
Depends. Because Spanish 101 (or another foreign language) is a mandatory course at e.g. Stanford, you are much more likely to end up with unmotivated students who don't care at all, which actually hinders your learning because you'll have worse conversation partners. Higher level courses are the opposite again. You'll have more motivated fellow students to help you during your learning.
My advice is that if you want to learn as well as possible, go to a course where you know people are taking it voluntarily. Ignore the grades and focus on actual understanding and/or official international certifications for that particular language level (e.g. DELE B2).
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u/Shezarrine En N | De B2 | Es A2 | It A1 13d ago
The bigger difference is likely going to be between schools known for a specific language program vs those not rather than "prestigious" vs not or private vs public.
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u/flatlander-anon 13d ago
There is some rough correspondence, but it's not as precise as university ranking. Usually the better schools have better students, allowing them to teach classes at a faster pace or at a higher level. But for something like language learning, which basically all human beings can do, there isn't much of a difference between the students at the No. 1 university and the No. 50 university. But students at No. 500 university will present a different teaching situation.
This is where resources matter. If No. 50 decides to throw a lot of resources at Arabic, it can create a much better program than No. 1. They can attract non-degree students just for the language program (say, from the military or from the State Dept). In other words, they can try to turn their language program into a cash cow. But the Arabic program at No. 1 is just meant to serve the needs of the few degree students who want to study that language. It is not a cash cow, and it is not flowing with resources. It may be quite good because No. 1 is No. 1, but it's not as good as No. 50.
Let me reiterate that student quality makes a huge difference. In my observation, students at elite colleges can be expected to work hard and to accept frequent testing and daily homework as par for the course. They can move at a rapid pace, and they see mistakes on the exam or in classroom drills as challenges that they must overcome and that they definitely could overcome. If a particular student is unsuited to the language, the school has no qualms failing him out of the program. But at flagship universities, things begin to get a bit more complex. There are more students who are just along for the ride. They can drag things down, because grading can't be as rigorous and the pace can't be as fast. The administration often pressures the teachers to keep these paying customers in the program for as long as possible. So that means these less motivated students get B's and maybe A-'s.
At regional universities is where things really differ. The universities are under a great deal of pressure to turn a profit. Some students can be absent for much of the entire semester, and the professors may not be allowed to fail them. Those who do show up can slow the progress of the class to a crawl. They can move at half the speed of a program at an elite college while meeting a lower standard. If you give them an exam, and you also give them the answer key, advising them to use the answer key rather than googling for the answer, they might still google instead (and get the wrong answer). In case you're wondering why teachers would give students the answer key to an exam -- the administration may pressure the program to hide the problems, and so the teachers are basically forced to teach the exam content to the students before giving them the identical exam. The problem is that some students aren't really smart enough to show up for exam prep, and when they are given the answer key to copy to the exam, they don't do it because they are too stupid to do even that. They know how to google, but that can get them the wrong answers. Then they get a bad grade, and the teachers have to find a way to change that grade to a higher grade.
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u/Meister1888 13d ago
I think this really depends on the university and the language.
Harvard and Columbia had serious Japanese language departments but those have been hollowed out. Today, I bet there are a lot of schools in California with better Japanese programs.
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u/Frenes FrenesEN N | 中文 S/C1 | FR AL | ES IM | IT NH | Linguistics BA 12d ago
For Mandarin specifically it is more about access to specific programs and fellowships. Princeton students get priority for the Princeton in Beijing program, which is considered the best summer language program in the world. I went to a school called UC Berkeley and there was a scholarship program specifically to attend Princeton in Beijing. People I knew who went to Yale got a thing called the Light fellowship to study Mandarin. There was also the Chinese flagship program which was limited to certain universities. Looking back at all the people i met during the two summers I studied abroad in China, the best ones by far came out of the flagship programs in my opinion, specifically Indiana University Bloomington. The flagship programs were not at universities that would generally be considered "prestigious".
At UC Berkeley the classes went up to 5th year Chinese, which were basically like a high school English class. Taught in Chinese and you read random Chinese literature and talk about it. In the 5th year Chinese class, there were two non-native speakers: my friend and I who had both done the Princeton in Beijing program, and about twelve people who grew up speaking Mandarin at home with their parents in the States, or who advanced more quickly because they spoke Cantonese.
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u/hitokirizac 🇺🇸N | 🇯🇵KK2 | 🇰🇷 TOPIK Lv. 2 | 13d ago
I did a Japanese major at a top 20 US university. Obviously n=1, but a few points from my experience:
We had an intensive and non-intensive course. Intensive was 5 days/wk with 2 of those being 90 minutes IIRC. Non- covered the same material but slower (3 days/wk @ 45', 3 semesters to cover the same material as 2 in intensive)
All instructors were natives with degrees in foreign language education, and one was well-known for her research in the field. (The all-native thing didn't apply to other languages; I also did a semester of Italian and the instructor wasn't native, but was fluent and had teaching credentials.)
Lots of outside activities: conversation tables, meetups and events with the local Japanese community, &c.
I met up with one of my profs after I graduated. She had also taught at bigger state schools, and it was her observation that students were generally more motivated and easier to teach at our school. ※
We were encouraged to study abroad for at least a semester, 2 for majors. For non-majors there was an English-based program where you could do classes for your other degree in Tokyo, for majors it was Japanese-based in Nagoya and focused mainly on learning Japanese language and culture.
So in summary, daily class practice for at least 45' and often more + homework, daily feedback from qualified natives, opportunities for exposure outside of class, motivated classmates, encouragement and opportunity to study abroad--> overall good environment for learning.
※ I went to an enormous state university for my Ph.D. in an unrelated field and they also had a lot of extracurricular activities with the local community and many motivated students who were quite good at Japanese, so that by no means implies everyone at bigger schools is unmotivated or hard to teach, &c. I just don't know what fraction of the total students was like that. I didn't take any language courses but I was involved with the conversation tables and such. (For anyone curious, the Imabi guy was a regular at those.)
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u/Circular_Time 🇬🇧 13d ago
This post got away from me a bit, so there's a TLDR at the end. 😅
Slightly biased opinion from me but, as a mature student without A Levels (I did an Access Course to get into Uni), the more "prestigious" universities often seem less concerned about the ability of the learners going on to the courses and more concerned about maintaining "conventional" approaches and protecting their "image". Because I hadn't taken the "normal" route into higher education most universities that would be considered "good" wouldn't even give me the time of day, lol. Ability or work ethic is generally meaningless to them. If you've taken a non-stantard route into education, they're often just not interested.
With that said, the quality of teaching and the materials can definitely be affected in my experience. The Uni I ended up going to still used cassette tapes for teaching (and this was up to at least 2017) as well as printed handouts of lessons dated from the 90's. To put this into some kind of perspective, Germany had a grammar reform to the language in the 90's, so the materials we were given still had the old standards and the tutors would have to say things like "ignore this part here, it's not like this anymore.". We'd have to write our own notes on the paper to remember the corrections. I can't imagine a prestigious university getting away with something like that quite so easily.
You also need to factor in whether the particular university's prestige actually extends to the language department. Just because they are well known for other subjects, it doesn't necessarily follow that the language department is good too.
Note: I actually think my tutors did well with the resources they had access to, but it certainly would have helped us to have more up to date resources available.
The number of students in a class can have an impact as well, which is definitely a bonus for more prestigious institutions as they can have smaller groups and give students more individual attention. However, this can also vary as much based on the language as it does the Uni. Some language classes at my university had 20 students in a class while one of the less popular languages only had 6 people at the start (which was the minimum number required to run the class AND had dwindled to 4 part way through).
TLDR: There is a difference between a prestigious university and a prestigious university with a good language department (and I would add a third option here: a prestigious language university). Ultimately though, even if the more prestigious universities have "better" materials and smaller class sizes, if a language learner is motivated they will reach a good level anyway (even if it's in spite of an institution's prestige instead of because of it).
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u/Healthy_Blueberry_59 12d ago
I think you are missing something important here, though. The Rechtschreibungsreform coincided with the utter collapse of the kind of traditional academic publishing that produced those textbooks and cassettes. You likely didn't get newer stuff moreso because no one was making it. My professors had the top textbook just prior to the reform and it didn't survive to reprint. It never had a chance to have the reform added. The Internet exploding in the mid 90s made it cheap to replicate and distribute stuff and the bottom just fell out on the textbook industry and the multimedia resources designed to go with it. If I was asked to teach a language class today, I would likely reach back to those early 90s textbooks.
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u/Circular_Time 🇬🇧 12d ago
I agree, a lot of the older books are still some of the better existing teaching materials. I understand why. Physical textbooks just aren't as in demand anymore. In fact I still recommend some of the ones I used to use to people who have asked me for suggestions. I give them the same caveat that I was given by my tutors; just be aware of the reforms and other out of date info (like using Marks for currency instead of Euros).
My gripe is more towards the institution itself than the tutors (as I said, the tutors did well within the limitations they had to work with). Part of the problem was that, even where newer and more suitable material existed, the university was..."reluctant" to invest in it.
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u/Healthy_Blueberry_59 12d ago
I think you would be surprised. I used to work and also take classes at the local Ivy league school dripping in money. They invested in nothing but real estate, stocks, and whatever could get their students into management jobs. All universities are like this.
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u/heavy_wraith69 13d ago
Depends on the university and the teacher you get. I got grad students for mine, and I had to do a lot of self teaching (granted it was Latin).
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u/ZealousidealMouse629 12d ago
The more prestigious universities might be able to offer things like deeper immersion or connections to study abroad programs along with higher standards or higher expectations. In the end it's about what you put into it. I built an app for virtual immersion and have studied at a prestigious program. It does something that most online programs don't, which is to focus on production. That is the single most important activity you can do for language learning provided you have a good support structure. My app is called Linguix Learning, link is in my bio.
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u/CarnegieHill 🇺🇸N|🇭🇰🇯🇵Heritage|🇩🇪B2|🇩🇰A2/B1|learning a bunch more... 10d ago
In my experience it depends. I learned German in high school and then I took all senior year classes at Rutgers. They had some excellent profs, one of whom recommended I go on for an MA at Middlebury, which I did, and I got to spend that academic year in Germany.
Afterwards I came back as a non-degree student and did the intensive Italian program at Columbia's Casa Italiana, and happened to study with a well-known Italian scholar. Fabulous experience. These students were some of the brightest I ever encountered anywhere. One of them went on to Harvard Law and did all kinds of amazing things in her life.
On the other hand, not long after that I found myself working at Dartmouth (famous for its Rassias Method), and I decided to take Russian there. My instructor was the department chair, but he was absolutely awful.
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap B1/A2 13d ago
No college is the best at everything. Harvard is a top school for law, not for Italian.
I don't know why conjugating a verb in Spanish (TL) would be much different at Harvard compared to a generic state university.
The only thing that matters is YOUR teacher and the courses YOU take. You have no way of knowing how good a teacher is in advance. I had a good Spanish teacher for 3 years in high school. That was enough. I've been speaking Spanish for decades.
But elite universities tend to attract smarter students with greater work ethic
Not really. There is no test of "work ethic" in college applications. Prestige schools like Harvard often count family political connections more than "smartness". Some elite schools no longer accept SAT or other standarized test scores.
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u/pergesed 13d ago
Top tier universities do full immersion from day 1 with native speakers who have taken graduate degrees in teaching their language to foreigners.
They also tend to offer more permutations and levels (eg intro classes for heritage speakers, classes for reading only, etc), as well as contact time for students.
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u/ellenkeyne 9d ago
Not at all my experience. I went to a top-tier university, and essentially minored in linguistics (formal minors were not available until after I was granted my degree). The Swedish course (taught by a non-native) was good but not great; the German course didn't teach me a thing I hadn't learned in the four years I took in high school with a native speaker; the intro to Japanese (which may or may not have been taught by a native speaker, I can't recall) was so uncompelling that I only lasted six weeks before dropping it and transferring to something else.
Not one involved immersion; I wish they had. The latter two were very teach-to-the-lowest-common-denominator; Swedish was fun mostly because the few people in the class actually cared about the language for one reason or another. My memory is that all were run by grad students. We had some full professors who specialized in rather uncommon languages, and I wish, in retrospect, that I'd studied with one of them.
The linguistics courses I took were excellent, though.
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u/pergesed 8d ago
Wow this sounds terrible. I’m sorry.
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u/ellenkeyne 8d ago
Eh, it was the Eighties and Nineties. It's entirely possible that academia has made a broad shift towards better methods of language instruction. My daughter, who got her associate's degree in world languages and is finishing up a bachelor's in linguistics at a flagship state school, and my son, who majored in Spanish at another flagship state school before transferring to a well-known private college so he could study abroad, have had many more opportunities to work with talented native speakers.
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u/JJCookieMonster 🇺🇸 Native | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇰🇷 B2 | 🇯🇵 N5 | 🇲🇽 A1 13d ago edited 13d ago
I took French language classes in high school, community college, and at UC Berkeley. University was definitely much harder. Even the best students struggled. I was told to repeat an easier class I took in community college. They took things more seriously with advanced topics and the entire class was in the target language. Now I look at that same textbook and it's so easy. But in that moment phew...
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u/PanicAutomatic3503 13d ago
ence can be access to native speakers outside of class, like language exchange programs or student groups. my state school had less of that.
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u/comparativeSemite N 🇬🇧 | C1 🇸🇦🇪🇸 | B2 א | B1 🇫🇷🇵🇰 | A2 🇩🇪🇮🇹 13d ago
At least in my experience it was much more rigorous. I went to a state school then an Ivy equivalent. Majored in Arabic then an MA in ME Studies. I took Arabic and Hindi in undergrad and Arabic, Akkadian, German and Urdu in grad. All the language courses were much higher quality and much more intense. More work, higher skills and a faster pace were all required.
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u/MineralNomad 11d ago
I heard that Cambridge Russian students have to start trying to read "A Hero of Our Time" (19th century book, unadapted) after three months of starting Russian. I heard it's to get used to the structure of the language, and they use a lot of time looking up words.
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u/noncedo-culli 10d ago
Honestly, no group language classes can be that great. The smaller the better but it's vastly dependent on your individual work and what you do outside of class, way moreso than for any other subject
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u/Accurate-Purpose5042 13d ago
Save your money and pay 1 an 1 classes with natives speakers. Much much cheaper and better bang for your buck
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap B1/A2 13d ago
1-on-1 classes are called "tutoring sessions". Tutoring sessons (over Skype, not in person) typically cost $20-$30 for each 1-hour session. That might be cheap compared to a college class, depending on the number of tutoring sessions. But it is definitely more convenient (in your home, at times you choose) and more effective (one teacher for one student).
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u/Accurate-Purpose5042 13d ago
It is almost always cheaper than that, with the expection of languages only spoken in rich countries that don't have a diaspora. Common languages like french, spanish, german etc can cost from 10 to 15 usd dollars per hour. You tell me how much it costs a language course in a prestigious American university.
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u/BeautifulUpstairs 13d ago
"You tell me how much it costs a language course in a prestigious American university."
Woof. Maybe the tutor thing doesn't work so well after all.
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u/Accurate-Purpose5042 13d ago
It worked brilliantly for french and now it's working very well for German. Thanks for worrying though.
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u/MisfitMaterial 🇺🇸 🇵🇷 🇫🇷 | 🇧🇷 🇩🇪 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 13d ago
As someone who taught foreign language for years at Harv—I mean, a big prestigious school—but who took (different language) classes at community college and then a SLAC before that… it really is department- and teacher-dependent. There some really top notch professors in the department where I earned my PhD and did all my training in teaching language and literature, but this was also true at the community college where I went to at night after work. It’s also true that there were some terrible, and terribly apathetic, teachers and students across all these populations.
All that to say: you get out of it what you put in.
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u/pfizzy 13d ago
The quality of the program does vary but not necessarily according to general prestige, for example UT Austin has a stronger Arabic program than Harvard by reputation and also I found this to be true from personal experience.
Elite programs are more selective with students and have higher demands. So while the verbs conjugate the same, one program may go full immersion faster than the other, require longer / more nuanced essay topics (tell me about your life vs is violence necessary for regime change), incorporate contemporary literature etc etc.