Amid a downward trend in collegiate language course enrollments nationally, UCLA language programs and student organizations continue to push for active engagement in language learning.

Language learning enrollment in higher education saw a significant drop in recent years, according to the latest Modern Language Association report released last November. On the other hand, the report applauded the strengths of UCLA’s language departments.

According to the MLA report, enrollment in languages other than English dropped 16.6% between 2016 and 2021, the largest five-year drop recorded. There has been a downward trend in student enrollment numbers since 2009, a reversal of the previous rising trend in enrollment numbers from 1980 to 2009.

Joshua Ching, a third-year linguistics and computer science student, is currently learning Japanese, Mandarin, Korean and Spanish. Despite his love for language learning, Ching said he prefers self-studying over formal classes.

“I personally think that classes are really inefficient and there’s a lot of time you have to wait,” Ching said. “Whereas when you’re self-studying, … it’s just you practicing all the time, so you can do that a lot faster.”

Despite overall drops in language learning enrollment, the report identified 10 cases of institutions defying this trend. One of the identified institutions was UCLA, which offers language courses in more than 40 different languages.

Specifically, the report highlighted UCLA’s work supporting heritage speakers through the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department. For instance, UCLA’s Armenian program is one of the only two programs outside Armenia to offer instruction in classical, Western and Eastern Armenian to cater to the needs of different heritage speakers.

Academic efforts to enhance language learning have also been underway at UCLA, including the creation of the European Languages and Transcultural Studies department in 2021.

Todd Presner, chair of the ELTS department, said the creation of the ELTS department brought together four separate language departments – French, Italian, Germanic and Scandinavian. The merged departments allow for more coordination and collaboration in teaching and research, he added.

“This (ELTS) has given rise to new kinds of collaborative teaching, new approaches to research collaboration, especially focused on big issues like the future of democracy or environmental crises or questions around computation and AI,” Presner said.

Presner added that the department focuses on a new paradigm in education that analyzes relevant transcultural and transnational issues. It emphasizes teaching current issues such as immigration and racism, according to ELTS professor Dominic Thomas in a Los Angeles Times interview.

Presner said the new paradigm also focuses on integrating frameworks of social justice, which includes areas such as environmental and economic justice. He added that while the German program spearheaded the inclusion of social justice in language learning at UCLA, this principle is now applied broadly across languages.

Chair of ELTS’ German language program Magdalena Tarnawska Senel said she began shifting her approach to language education after realizing traditional textbooks were outdated.

She added that she incorporates conversations on societal issues into her teaching to address the outdated nature of textbooks.

“If you look at the racism directed at different communities, you look at the politics and you look at how the LGBTQ student community is targeted, … we cannot pretend, in the language classroom, that that doesn’t exist,” Tarnawska said.

Besides adding topics grounded in social justice to courses, the department has also offered students career opportunities to apply their language skills professionally.

Presner said the department hosted a job fair last year with a dozen companies from France, Belgium and Luxembourg. With participation from companies like luxury fashion business Louis Vuitton and a turnout of around 60 to 70 students, Presner said his team plans on pushing this initiative forward and including German and Italian companies starting in the 2024-2025 school year.

Additionally, the department offers the UCLA Russian Flagship program, a federally-funded program designed for students to achieve advanced-level Russian language proficiency by graduation.

Kalia Lai, a second-year global studies student minoring in Russian language and literature, said she decided to participate in the program after a professor in her Russian introductory course recommended it to her.

Lai said the program includes opportunities such as study abroad in Kazakhstan and weekly online tutoring by native speakers. According to the Russian Flagship website, students in the program also participate in community events such as museum visits and multicultural performance nights.

While an abundance of academic resources exists, students still take part in clubs on campus due to the benefits of language learning in a less formal environment.

For example, the Bruin Polyglot Society seeks to create a casual and conversational environment for language learners to foster community around shared interests, club president Ching said.

“What I wanted to do with my club is have a space where you could meet other people, share tips and tricks, support each other … and have a language-learning community on campus,” Ching said.

Ching added that he hosts weekly community language exchange events with the Bruin Polyglot Society. He said his efforts to facilitate social spaces for language learning came from his observation that UCLA lacks these casual spaces.

While the UCLA Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars organizes programs for students, Ching said he found them to be unhelpful. He said he applied to the language exchange program but never got matched nor received a response from the Dashew Center.

On the other hand, Lai said she matched with a Taiwanese graduate student through the program and enjoyed the mutually beneficial relationship she formed.

In addition to providing accessible spaces for language learning, student organizations such as Bruin Polyglot Society are also valuable in their focus on inclusivity and support over formal educational mechanisms, Ching said.

In a similar vein, Tarnawska said while the educational mechanisms of language learning remain important to her, she now also values incorporating new and relevant contexts and topics to enhance the traditional classroom experience of language learning.

“There is the focus on the exclusive use of the target language and also on developing linguistic proficiency and cultural competency,” Tarnawska said. “It’s still very much the same framework. But what’s really changed for me are the topics and the context and the connection of what we are learning to the world around us.”