Alumni Testimonials
Want to know why you should continue or start learning a world language and how it will benefit your personal and professional life? Listen to these alumni stories for their perspectives.
Ashley
Nursing and Spanish double major
Studied abroad in Granada, Spain
“I did not come into college with the intention of continuing Spanish. I took it for four years in high school, because like many, I had to take a language and then when I got to college I figured, if I spent four years investing in this skill, I might as well actually be able to use it and finally become fluent. So I decided to do a Spanish minor and then when talking with the Nursing advisor Kileigh she encouraged me to do a second major. She was like “Sure, just make it another major. Study abroad while you’re at it!” And at first I thought she might have been a little crazy but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and she worked with me to make it all possible in four years!”
Kristiana, Stephanie, and Arianne
Communication Sciences and Disorders majors and either Francophone Studies or Spanish minors (or both)
"Taking both phonetics (French and CSD) at the same time, I would literally be learning something one week in my CSD Phonetics class and the next week in French phonetics talk about (the same thing) consonants. I thought, I’m not even going to study because I would read the textbook and it would be word for word what I’d just learned in my CSD class almost - just in French! And it was kind of cool to be able to see that and how the different words for the parts of speech or the organs of speech were pretty similar (or weren’t) and it was nice to not have to worry about, since I had spent an entire anatomy class learning about the larynx and the pharynx and the tongue and which parts touch which parts to just be able to feel that in your mouth for French as well and to have that overlap. But for me, especially the overlap I’ve seen the most: I tutor a Congolese individual on the weekends, and seeing that multiple-language-learner perspective in the overlap of French with learning English and being able to apply phonetic knowledge and to be able to say “I know this feels weird… Just muscularly and being able to, not diagnose, but see some places where she might be pronouncing something differently and know “that’s because this sound doesn’t exist in French!” And it’s just in English and figuring out ways that I can help her remember things. Being able to apply that phonetic knowledge with French has been really cool in that setting."
