Foreign language faculty adjust their curricula to ensure that today's college students know how to use technology tools to communicate

Dr. Kevin M. Gaugler had an epiphany in his Spanish class when a student asked how to affix an accent mark over the letter “a” on a computer. The question was simple, but Gaugler’s answer was quite long. The button sequence to accomplish the task is different for desktop computers and laptops, as well as for Macintosh and PC operating systems.

That incident marked the birth of a new class Gaugler has introduced at Marist College, where he has taught since 2000. Appropriately enough, it’s called “Spanish and Technology.”

“Since I dedicated an entire day of class to accent marks,” says Gaugler, an associate professor, “I knew there was an entire course in here, somewhere, about communications technology and Spanish.”

Nationally, foreign language faculty have been adjusting their curricula to ensure that today’s college students know how to use technology to communicate effectively in languages other than their native tongue. Once upon a time, students were considered fluent if they could read, write, speak and aurally comprehend a foreign language. But that isn’t enough anymore, educators say. In an age of corporate mergers, downsizing and cost-effective global communication, there is less of an emphasis on overseas business travel, and less travel means less face-to-face interaction. These days, graduates who tout foreign language skills on their job applications are expected to be able to use those skills in a variety of ways. Their tasks could include anything from producing a company memo, negotiating a business deal by phone, writing a grammatically correct e-mail or composing a culturally relevant podcast.

Higher education’s response to such technical expectations has varied from campus to campus. In some cases, free-standing courses like Gaugler’s have sprung up. In others, faculty merely field student questions as they arise. Language experts are unaware of any statistics tracking classes such as Gaugler’s. But they say the matter of technological bilingualism is perhaps most common among students taking Spanish, the most popular of the more than 140 foreign languages taught in this country.