Keep Spanish class sizes down

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Posted: 3/21/07

OUR OPINION: It is a big mistake to sweep Spanish 101 under the rug and increase the class size, making it a lecture hall-style format. The change will lower the quality and effectiveness of the course and won't bode well for students.

The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures has decided to conduct Spanish 101 classes using the lecture hall-style format. Students will now sit in a big auditorium and miss out on all one-on-one interaction with the professor.

This will cause some major issues.

Spanish 101 is the basis for the language. It is the most critical building block and a lack of personal student-professor interaction and general, less creative teaching methods will erode away all that is essential to developing competency.

Students won't be prepared for upper-level courses -- they will always struggle with the basics.

According to Ruth Gross, head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, "101 courses are the least important to us."

The head of the department doesn't realize the importance of introductory courses, which is an unfortunate development.

The department's rebuttal is most students take Spanish in high school, and, therefore, should be prepared when they come in to 101. The thought is that 101 is a basic review course.

The reality is that rarely anyone remembers anything from high-school Spanish. Coloring worksheets, watching cheesy videos and throwing fiestas every Friday does little to prepare would-be college students for collegiate-level courses.

The department claims it will offer one-on-one tutoring for students enrolled in the large classes. The average student won't go out of his or her way to attend a tutoring session outside of class time.

Evidently, there will also be a slew of TAs in each class to aid the professor with the large numbers.

We pay tuition so we can be taught by the best and brightest. We recognize the importance of TAs -- they can be helpful -- but using them as a rationale to justify a course setting is insufficient.

The growing trend in universities all over the country is to decrease class sizes. In fact, most institutions boast small class sizes as a recruitment tool.

Increasing class sizes, regardless of their perceived importance or worth, is a step in the wrong direction.

The department needs to reconsider. If not, nothing good will come of the class size increase except more sleep for the students in the back row.