By Jesse Rush, Senior, Biological Science & Spanish Double Major
The language requirement of Chapman’s general education program tends to get a bad rap, and students often times dread taking language classes. If you don’t know about it yet, you basically have to take a language until you complete a 200 level course. For some people it takes one semester and for others three, but for almost all it’s that annoying class that they have to fit into their four year plan. You may wish the days of taking language classes were back in high school, but I think this is one, if not the most, important GE requirement Chapman has.
Learning a language is so different from any other course you’ll take, no matter your major. It makes you think in a completely different way and this new approach can help you in your other classes. As a science major, I see a lot of similarities between math and Spanish. Just like math, Spanish has all these different formulas you have to follow, and of course there are also x amount of exceptions to that rule. Learning Spanish was most useful when I had to take computer science, a required course for all biology majors, because it was like learning the language spoken by a computer instead of spoken by a person.
Spanish has taught me to be patient with my coursework, to never be afraid to ask for extra help, and to take the initiative to go past memorizing what we learn in class. Studying Spanish past the requirement has helped me a lot, but the GE requirement itself is what motivated me to keep going to a higher level. I took SPAN 201 as an incoming freshman and after I realized that that would be my last semester with a language course, I signed up for SPAN 202 over interterm. This led me to eventually declare a minor and then a double major in Spanish.
For any GE requirement you never know if the class will spark a new interest and lead you down a new path, whether that be declaring a new minor, major or just taking some extra classes in something you’re interested in. Additionally, any GE requirement can help sharpen some old skills you have or help you uncover new ones. Although I may be a bit biased as a Spanish major, I am definitely an advocate for the language requirement. Just know, even if you end up hating whatever language you take, if you learn as least one useful thing, it was worth it.
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