alexseanchai | (no subject)

Debating what language to sign up for in the fall. American Sign Language 111, Spanish 111, or Chinese 111. ASL and SPAN are both viable choices for my two-year language requirement for my BA and CHN is not, but I could switch to the BS and take something sciency at some point and then take CHN (or ASL, or SPAN, or KOR...) for fun. (nb: still pissed that the Japanese Ecampus courses start with 300-level.)

CHN (per the sample syllabus) requires video chatting with classmates and my work schedule in conjunction with my three-hour time difference from campus is not likely to make that easy. ASL strongly encourages video chatting with classmates. SPAN, no data (no sample syllabus).

SPAN, there's an excellent chance I can con my employer into paying for the tuition for those classes (to nobody's surprise, it is the most common first language in the state after English). CHN, a decent chance (we do a lot of business with China). ASL—my customer service in this job is all telephone-based, so it's not likely that my employer will think a strictly visual language has any relevance to my employment!

I have credit for Spanish I already, so I would need departmental permission to take SPAN 111 instead of SPAN 112, and I'd be paying for the course without getting credit for taking it. (No way do I recall enough Spanish to go straight to 112.) I have no previous study of Chinese or ASL.

And that's basically the pros-cons list!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Given everything that's going on, do you really want to switch degree tracks? (Also, if you can get your employer to pay for Spanish isn't it worth the hurdles?)

Switching from BA to BS is literally a matter of ditching the two-year language requirement in favor of four credits of science. (I've already met the rest of the BS requirements.) I'd have done it before except I want to learn ALL THE LANGUAGE.

Quite possibly.

A possible plus point for ASL would be as a resume item if you ever ended up applying for a directly customer-facing job, OTOH the same could be said for Spanish and Chinese, OTGH ASL would open up disability-related stuff in a way Spanish and Chinese don't.

Taken under advisement. (Directly customer-facing is scary, you know?)

Oh, hell yes! Even telephone customer service would be more than I could bear!

Fortunately my phone rings rarely! And usually it's somebody from one of the companies we work with, with a problem I know how to solve. So it's not as scary as it was.