Cooperative Programs in Foreign Language Studies Abroad: Work-Study in Hamburg

Abstract

During the summer of 1967 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare supported a program that was to test a new approach to the exposure of American undergraduates to foreign languages and cultures in the countries in which the respective languages are spoken. The German Department of the University of Cincinnati structured its Work-Study Program in Hamburg, Germany, according to the pattern that had been developed at Cincinnati for Cooperative Studies in Engineering or Business Administration as early as 1906 and has since been imitated by more than eighty universities in the United States. The main principle of cooperative programs is the constant application of knowledge gained in the classroom to practical situations encountered by the students during periods of employment in carefully selected enterprises. Such periods of work are interspersed in the years of study at regular intervals. To make the practical experience worthwhile, the employment of a student must be closely related to his field of studies. He can thus test his theoretical knowledge of his profession and return to school with new questions concerning the intricacies of his field. A program that provides employment to students in a foreign country on the basis of the same principles of selection offers its participants opportunities not only in respect to their future careers-be they in engineering, business administration, sociology, medicine or any other fieldbut adds the acquaintance with another language and another culture. (The term culture is used here to refer to the various aspects of a country's political, economic, social and intellectual situation and achievement.) This supplementary advantage of cooperative programs conducted abroad may indeed be the reason for instituting them. By improving the students' linguistic skills and acquainting participants with conditions abroad, such programs appear to be most valuable for students majoring in foreign languages or preparing for the foreign service. Yet the experience of the Cincinnati Program in Hamburg has shown that students in other fields can also profit professionally from a period of work in another country. In many professions the techniques may be the same as in the U.S., in others the students can study new methods and return with a professional knowledge that will make them the coveted employees of many an American firm in the future. Language departments should certainly make use of this appeal to students in other disciplines who have fulfilled the basic language requirement by offering cooperative programs abroad to students from all departments. No such program should, of course, be undertaken that has not been prepared conscientiously and can really assure its participants of employ-