“You know Spanish, right?” Language for Specific Purposes and the Challenge of Teaching Content Areas and Lexical Domain

“You know Spanish, right?” Most undergraduates with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish or another world language will, sooner or later, have to answer this question or one similar. This is particularly true for students educated in South Carolina, a state that houses over 1,200 international businesses within its borders (“International Presence”) and which has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the United States (Krogstad and López). In a typically monolingual state (see the Modern Language Association Language Map), those students who do possess a second language are poised to better integrate themselves into this international business community. However, what many monolinguals inaccurately assume is that being bilingual also means that one will be a skillful translator or interpreter, but this is not the case. Possessing a Spanish degree does not indicate proficiency in, for example, metallurgy or emergency medicine, in which it is necessary to provide quality language services. Unless students have been exposed to a variety of subjects relating to law, health care, business, and educational services in both English and Spanish, they will find themselves unprepared for the demand the community will place on them just because they are bilingual.

With conversation, composition, literature, and culture classes providing the bulk of the core curriculum for the language major, how do language departments address the communities’ needs for quality translators and interpreters? Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) not only provide a solution for the community, but they also allow connections with other disciplines. LSP is not a new concept, but rather a flashback to when the grammar-translation method was still considered the go-to teaching method. Due to the increased need for Spanish speakers, just being able to speak English and Spanish is not enough for language students to have an impact in their field. Students will find themselves hurled into a new profession, or even one for which they are supposedly prepared. As educators, have we explored every possible option for vocabulary acquisition in order to prepare students to understand the new lexical domains imposed on them by their jobs?

As universities decrease, and even eliminate, world language requirements in their general education curriculum, while some are cutting language programs altogether, languages for a specific purpose become even more vital and must begin at the lower levels. First, language departments must identify the most critical needs on their campuses and evaluate their available staffing resources. Genesis of such a program might start with the biggest opponents of world languages on a campus. Once the detracting disciplines are identified, language instructors need to demonstrate the value for these classes. For example, if one can develop a first-year Spanish course for health professionals, this type of class would appeal to nursing majors along with pre-med and possibly psychology students. However, the difficulty in starting such a class is finding an instructor who 1) is able to convince students of the relevancy of the course in their future professions; 2) has a thorough understanding of the field in both English and in Spanish; and 3) is willing to invest a lot of time in the class since the textbooks that are currently available are rudimentary at best.

When developing LSP programs at the upper-division level, there are several thoughts that each department needs to entertain. While developing translation and interpretation programs, such as minors or majors, departments need to be asking themselves: What is the end goal? How will departments measure student success? Is the department going to provide classes in a variety of areas such as Spanish for educators or legal Spanish? Will the department focus on one specific domain such as English to Spanish interpretation in educational settings? As states such as South Carolina contemplate a statewide licensure for interpreters, how will this affect university programming? As for the students, not only do they need the appropriate language skills in Spanish and in English, but they need to understand their role in the service that they will hopefully provide. They need to...