Students received an email over the long winter break about the newest addition to the Holy Spirit library. The department of romance languages was given a grant to have Pimsleur Language CD-ROMs in the library, available for students and staff to check out.
These CD-ROMs are a wide variety of multi-disk sets offered in many languages including Spanish, Italian, French, Mandarin Chinese, Eastern Arabic, Japanese and German.
The department made sure that all the CDs, excluding an error with Eastern Arabic, will be ready for circulation. Students and staff are able to take these CDs for a three-week period. The romance language department received the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language grant from the Office of Postsecondary Education of the United States Department of Education.
“When we received the grant, we met as a department … and we wanted to do something for the community. I ordered the CDs from Recorded Books. We consulted with faculty and the department to pick which languages to offer,” Dr. Cynthia Halpern, chairperson for romantic languages, said.
The department is doing many things and will be making moves within the next few semesters including adding more Spanish classes and opportunities for students. Halpern said, “We will be offering a course for Hispanic natives called Spanish for Heritage Speakers. You have to be a native speaker to be in this class. We’re taking a different audience for the formal training of the language, it will be an equivalent to Spanish 102.”
Students and faculty members have been becoming familiar with the new CD-ROMs in the library. “I know that one faculty member has been using them and has been listening to them,” Halpern states. The display of the CDs is placed right near the doorway to the right. This is where students can easily see them. The display catches the eyes of students as well.
“When I first saw the email, I thought it was pretty cool that we have the advantage of learning another language at our fingertips. I think within my spare time I will take one out and see what it’s like, because I want to learn other languages,” Bryana Manning, sophomore English major, said. The library offers these CDs so that students can have the world at their fingertips. The seven languages have three courses to them, except Spanish and Italian, which have four.
“To have the ability to have these resources in our library at our fingertips is really interesting. Some of these languages are ones that aren’t offered at high schools and even some colleges, so it’s great to see that we have a start of something interesting,” Brian Quirk, sophomore undecided major, said.
With the world languages being resources in the library, the department of Romance Languages hopes that students and faculty members take advantage of them to learn new language skills and global opportunities.
