Foreign languages and your career: a realistic plan to success
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Why study foreign languages in school or even major in one in college? There are many reasons--you will learn about the world, understand cultural differences, examine the systems of a language, appreciate works of art, understand history and its connections to today, grow as a person, and communicate with Spanish speakers in your career. Speaking a language, though, is just one of many qualities and experiences that you will bring to your job search and career path. Here is some realistic advice about the connections between foreign languages and careers.
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Foreign languages and your career: a realistic plan to success
- 1. Hello!
- 2. Buenos días.
- 3. Bon dia.
- 4. Buon giorno.
- 5. What do you say in Bergamasco?
- 6. Annie R. Abbott University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign @AnnAbbott Foreign Languages and Your Career___________________________________________________________________________________ A REALISTIC PLAN FOR SUCCESS
- 7. TRANSLATION & INTERPRETING require language proficiency, cultural knowledge and professional skills. Click for more information.
- 8. Learning languages isn’t tied to a specific career path.
- 9. However, it does develop qualities employers seek.
- 11. Think of your career plan as [language] + [profession/skill].
- 12. Human Resources Click to watch interview.
- 13. Insurance Click to watch interview.
- 14. Advice to students Click to watch interview.
- 15. THE TAKEAWAY You need to become as proficient as possible.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ AND__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ You can do a lot with imperfect language skills.
- 16. What should you do in college?
- 17. Because classes aren’t enough.
- 18. STUDY ABROAD
- 19. COMBINE PROGRAMS
- 20. BE A LEADER
- 25. SPANISH MAJOR Business Minor Translation Studies Certificate
- 26. SERVICE LEARNING Business Spanish Spanish in the Community
- 27. STUDY ABROAD Barcelona, Spain Full academic year Internship
- 28. EXTRACURRICULAR • Participates in Mi Pueblo • Volunteers as ESL tutor • Reads El País • Listens to Pandora in Spanish • Attends Latin American Film Festival • Watches movies in Spanish
- 29. Now that you know that languages are a plus, not necessarily a career…
- 30. …prepare yourself for a career in a world that is MULTILINGUAL MULTICULTURAL GLOBALIZED
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for inviting me. My name, what I do, where I work, how I feel about my work.
- I studied Spanish in high school in Clay City. I took it at UI, and it was a totally different experience. I loved it. But I majored in psychology, because I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I took a lot of English literature courses, because I liked it. Then I decided to study abroad.
- I spent my junior year in Barcelona, Spain. There I learned a bit of Catalan. It’s a bilingual city. (Explain that a bit.)
- I visited Italy during my year abroad and loved it. I loved how I was able to understand a lot because of my Spanish. I took a couple of courses when I came back to the university. Then I met my (future) husband and learned Italian with him and his family in Italy.
- Many people in Italy are bilingual: they speak standard Italian and their local dialect/language. I have a pretty good passive understanding of Bergamasco. When I was preparing this presentation, I asked my husband how to say Buon giorno in Bergamasco. He struggled with it. Couldn’t come up with anything. Finally I said: When your parents ran into someone, what’s the first thing they said to them?
- Take-aways Become as proficient as you can in high school. Take your language classes seriously! Develop your global literacy. Think beyond the place where you live right now, as much as you might like it here. Be curious about other cultures. Become comfortable with the notion that things can mean many things. Punctual isn’t necessarily “good”; it might mean “rude.” International politics is another example. Incorporate language study into your daily routines. If you ride the bus, listen to podcasts you downloaded. If you are on Facebook, change the language setting. Etc.
- See Patricia Phillips-Batoma’s slides about Careers in Translation and Interpreting. The main message is this: with imperfect Spanish, you can do some good/important
- Share qualities employers seek and characteristics of language learners. Ask students to match them up.
- In other words, try to combine some hard skills with language skills to maximize your chances of getting the best job possible.
- Your goal right now should be to get into a good college that has good programs in the career areas that interest you. Once you get into college, you should make languages a part of that plan.
- You will not become fluent in four years of speaking Spanish 50 minutes, three times a week plus homework. Furthermore, your goal might be language proficiency, but the department’s goal might be for you to learn about literature, critical thinking, strong academic writing, etc.
- Go for a year. Go to immerse yourself. Find a hobby and practice it there. Break away from the pack.
- Double major. Major and minor. Choose a certificate program. But remember: it’s less about your major than it is about the experiences you have and the skills you develop.
- At Illinois: become a leader of Mi Pueblo sessions; in Portuguese, join Consulting Brazil;
- At Illinois you can take “Spanish in the Community,” “Business Spanish” and “Spanish & Social Entrepreneurship.”
- At Illinois: Mi Pueblo, volunteering, RSOs, etc.
- Some programs have a capstone course or a senior thesis. Even if you don’t do one of those “standard” capstone offerings, you can make your own capstone experience. For example, Eric Bingham, pictured, worked at the Refugee Center. For their Annual Fundraising Dinner, he researched statistics about immigrants and refugees in East Central Illinois, prepared a script and design for a video that he narrated. It was shown at the Refugee Center’s dinner attended by almost 100 people and featured on their website. That is a good capstone experience that a person could talk about in a job interview.
- The business minor is competitive—employers like knowing that you have been vetted. It’s also in a different college, so you can take advantage of the resources in both colleges. The certificate in translation studies doesn’t show up on a transcript. But you can put it on your resume, and remember that employers are more interested in what you can do than in what titles you accumulated. Show, don’t tell. This particular certificate also includes a capstone project: a real-world translation project that is mentored by a faculty member. That is the kind of work that employers want to know about, not because of the project in and of itself but because it shows that you can work independently, you can manage a project with multiple parts, and you can see it all through to completion. If there is anything that I would add to this profile, it would be a technical skill. Coding. Website development. It could even be something that you have learned on your own, not majored in.
- In my Business Spanish class, Bridget worked in a student team and helped do the social media marketing (in English and Spanish) for a client: La Línea, a helpline for local Latino immigrants and others. The next semester she took “Spanish in the Community” and continued to work with La Línea, providing direct service and advocacy work. She now has a supervisor who can write letters for her and many client-based stories that she can use as evidence of her work ethic, responsibility and bilingual skills in any job interview or cover letter.
- Few students commit to the full year-abroad experience. It is a real differentiator and speaks to their commitment, engagement and passion for what they are studying. In this particular study abroad program, many students find an internship so that they come home with a new global perspective, life skills (map reading, making international travel plans, picking up the pieces when a problem occurs with the plan, etc.), and professional experience. We’ll see if Bridget does this.
- Last year I attended Mi Pueblo meetings and tutored ESL at Champaign Central High School. As of lately, I have been reading the news in Spanish. I like keeping up with current events; therefore, I try to read about the news in both Spanish and English. My go-to site is El Pais because of the wide variety. Also, I make an effort to listen to Spanish music via Pandora. Furthermore, I enjoy watching movies in Spanish. I attended the Latin American Film Festival last year, and that is when I started really enjoying foreign films. Some of my favorites are Elefante Blanco and También la lluvia. Also, tomorrow night I am volunteering at "International Night" through Volunteer Illini Projects at Booker T. Washington Elementary School. Could I use this volunteering towards my hours for SPAN 232?