Foreign Language & Culture Goucher Commons Requirement (FLC GCR)

The FLC GCR will be satisfied by earning a passing grade in the terminal course of Platform 1, 2, 3, or 4.

At the conclusion of their FLC GCR, all Goucher students will meet the following culture learning outcomes:

• Demonstrate awareness that geographic, historical, economic, religious, and political factors have an impact on cultural perspectives, products and practices, including language use and styles of communication.

• Demonstrate awareness that situational variables shape communicative interaction (verbal, non-verbal, and paralinguistic) and behavior in important ways. These variables include:

- Context and role expectations, including power differentials
- Age, gender, social class, religion, ethnicity, and place of residence

• Demonstrate an awareness of some types of causes (linguistic and non-linguistic) for cultural misunderstanding between members of different cultures.

Given the differences in difficulty of the languages offered at Goucher (including the need to master a new alphabet in Arabic and Chinese), and the different starting points of students depending on their placement, the language-specific learning outcomes will vary. Below is a description of the language-specific learning outcomes for students enrolled in French and Spanish. Differences in the learning outcomes for languages with a different alphabet are indicated with an asterisk. At the conclusion of these platforms, students should be able to:

Platform 1:

• Write and speak using the infinitive and the indicative (present and past tenses). Recognize the subjunctive moods of regular and irregular verbs.
  *Students will perform with all but subjunctive mood and have fewer irregular verbs.

• Understand information from sentence-length speech. Ask and respond to simple questions.

• Create and connect simple paragraphs to write short, grammatically correct compositions with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.
  *Students will be able to write a comprehensible, grammatically correct paragraph.

• Find, and interpret multiple texts in varying modalities, including digital formats.

Platform 2:

• Write and speak using the infinitive, indicative, and subjunctive moods of regular and irregular verbs to narrate and express opinions, emotions, influence, and doubt.
  *Students will write and speak with all the above except the subjunctive mood.

• Understand, with ease and confidence, sentence-length speech in basic personal and social contexts.

• Create and connect grammatically correct paragraphs to write compositions with a clear thesis, an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.
  *Students will be able to create and connect simple paragraphs to write short, compositions with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

• Find, analyze, interpret, and evaluate multiple texts in digital and other formats.

Platform 3:

• Write and speak using the subjunctive moods of regular and irregular verbs, and all the major time frames of past, present, and future to narrate and express opinions, emotions, influence, and doubt.

• Understand short conventional spoken narrative and descriptive accounts.

• Plan, produce and revise grammatically correct narrative, descriptive and argumentative texts.
  *Students will be able to create and connect paragraphs to write compositions with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

• Draw on texts in multiple formats to defend an argument and support it with primary sources.

Platform 4:

• Write and speak using the appropriate moods and time frames of past, present, and future to express personal meaning, ask questions appropriately, and interact spontaneously in conversation.

• Understand conventional spoken narrative and descriptive accounts, including narrations about past, present, and future events.

• Write to narrate and describe in the major time frames of past, present, and future integrating relevant and supporting facts in connected, grammatically correct, paragraph-length discourse.

  *Students will do the same but will be slightly limited in their control of tense use in writing.

• Compare and contrast the differences between kinds of texts in multiple formats (written and oral) to defend an argument and support it with primary sources.

ASL can satisfy the FLC GCR.  Since we do not offer ASL at Goucher, however, students will need to complete 4-12 credits at another accredited institution, according to the level of ASL at which they initially place. Interested students need to provide the director of the MLLC Center a detailed plan and corresponding syllabi from the higher ed institution dispensing the courses.

The sequence of ASL courses must include language and culture. Part of that cultural training would most likely include exposure to the world’s diverse sign languages and the fact that American Sign Language is not the same as British Sign Language, nor is French Sign Language the same as Canadian, etc. Please note that you may need to take 4 semesters of ASL (3 language classes + 1 culture class) in order to fulfill the language and culture requirement.