Demographics and Barriers

Assessment of the demographics where I work

This is the 15th year that I teach college Spanish in the United States. I started teaching at VCU in 1999. Currently, my classes are for students in the 100, 200, and 400 levels, but I have also taught 300 level classes. The population that I serve are college students, which do not comprise an homogenous group, much less when we talk about popular, living languages like Spanish or French. My classes usually have mostly 18-21 year-old students; perhaps half of them work and the other half dedicates its time to study only. I can divide my students in three categories:

1. Students who had studied some Spanish before college, therefore they feel more confident that they can either learn or that they will never learn but they will try this time. This is probably 60 to 70 percent of the students.

2. Students who never took Spanish before college and they feel that they need to study more and that they need to catch up. This is about 20 percent of the students.

3. Probably 1 in 10 students come to Spanish without ever having taken a formal foreign language class before. These students are very nervous and they usually drop the class, because they feel overwhelmed with the amount of vocabulary they need to learn.

Every class also has one or two older adults—let's say of 25+ years of age—who are taking the class because they came back to finish their degree or because they work at VCU and it is easier for them to take a free class. This is the most restricted group, even more than the students who have never taken a foreign language before.

Unfortunately, the type of text book and curriculum used in our classes were not made for older students, who have different needs and experience with the language. Most older adults who have decided to study Spanish, do it because they have friends who are native speakers, they have lived among native speakers, or because they just like the language. Their motivation is different from those of regular students, who for the most part take Spanish because they have to take a language.

Barriers:
• The textbooks are written and organized for younger learners, maybe from 17 to 22.  The topics covered in every textbook are the same, and older students can only relate to three or four of those topics.
• Technology is used more and more in foreign languages. Older students sometimes have more troubles with how to access the book online materials than with the conjugation of verbs.
• Languages are social, and students need to interact. Older and young students need to get used to each other in order to have conversations in the target language.
• The pace of college classes is always faster than high school classes, and much more faster than informal classes taught at churches, clubs, even this university.
• Older students tend to have different goals. While young students focus more on the ability to write and listen, older learners tend to focus on oral communication.
• The type of language covered by textbooks can be classified as standard, but older adults are looking also for the regional language that their friends speak.