[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I elected at the time to obtain the BSc degree in Psychology. No really profound reasons, except I hated the thought of spending more useless time in a language lab, for something I was never going to use. I never saw myself working at the United Nations, or in some foreign service office of the CIA. (Too bad, I would of been outstanding in either ).
It is interesting how many Americans seem to see the ability to read a language other than English as either an exotic "frill" or, at best, a potential job skill. I guess I used to think so too (when I lived inthe US) until I moved to Montreal, where even the bums on the street a typicall bilingual. Almost everyone in Europe speaks *at least* a second language (Britons excepted, of course). One has to be fluent in *three* languages to even apply for a flight attendant job on Air Canada.
Given that a sizeable proportion of the US population is now made up of native Spanish speakers, and that something like a quarter of the world's countries have French as an official language (not to mention that it is more than a little useful, even enjoyable, to be able to sidestep the American mass media from time to time) learning a "foreign" language would seem like a reasonable thing to expect of undergraduate students. How many of the inorganic chemistry labs you attended have you "used" since? :-) (Not that one need make so stark a choice, in any case.)
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ .
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