U.S. college students seem to recognize the importance of knowing foreign languages, including Arabic and Chinese, in an era of globalization. The Modern Language Association’s survey of enrollments in languages other than English reports that enrollments expanded by 12.9% since 2002.
The study of the most popular languages — Spanish, French, and German — continues to grow and represents more than 70% of language enrollments. There is growing interest in languages such as Arabic (up 126.5%), Chinese (up 51.0%), and Korean (up 37.1%).
And, as an aside, enrollments in American Sign Language increased nearly 30% from 2002, the association reports.
