Foreign Languages

Language: French and Portuguese

As the foreign language teachers we want to foster a love of learning languages. French and Portuguese share a great deal of lexical and structural similarities with English as well as other European languages because it is a member of the Romance language family, which is descended from Latin. Because of this connection, studying French or Portuguese can make learning other Romance languages like Catalan, Galician, Italian, Spanish and Romanian easier.

 

While we, the foreign language teachers,  provide rich and varied language input and encourage students to utilize French or Portuguese wherever possible, English is used as a medium of instruction as well as for clarification and debate. This gives students the chance to ask questions, discuss the differences and similarities between French or Portuguese and their own language(s) and culture(s), and express their feelings about the process of learning and using a new language.