Teaching and Language Diversity
VCU is a school of extremely dense language diversity. This is one of the most interesting aspects of working here, especially as much of my job is to encourage students to experience language as a functional medium for artistic, professional, and personal endeavors. Linguistic diversity in the classroom allows all of us a new lease on the languages we use. Like any language, English is built from a motley of sources; like every language, it’s enriched by contact with siblings, distant cousins, and strangers.
Every year my program surveys the languages spoken by our students. Since 2009, I’ve seen all of the languages below in my classroom. Click on any for more information.
Afrikaans
Akan (usually reported as Twi)
Amharic
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (Yue and Mandarin)
English
Farsi
French
German
Gujarati
Hindi
Italian
Jamaican Patois
Korean
Malyalam
Mescalero Chiricahua
Nepalese
Punjabi
Russian
Somali
Spanish
Tagalog
Thai
Urdu
Vietnamese
Most of the links above will take you to the Ethnologue language cataloging project. One of the languages above, Mescalero Chiricahua, is linked not to the Ethnologue, but to the Endangered Languages project. Their website is incredibly interesting, and will allow you to lose hours of your day just browsing and listening. I highly recommend it:
