Major program: The Less Commonly Taught Languages Program expands the range of language and cultural opportunities available to the Wesleyan community in the classroom and beyond, reflecting and fostering Wesleyan's commitment to diversity. Less Commonly Taught Languages courses are offered under the LANG (Language) designation, usually year-long, and may be used as preparation for focused study abroad, in support of academic interests, or to fulfill more personal goals.

SILP Program: The Self Instructional Language Program (SILP) permits students to petition for the opportunity to study a language not presently offered at Wesleyan. Petitions are evaluated on the basis of the student’s academic needs, or in conjunction with language study abroad.  Students whose petitions are approved study independently using a text, and audio and visual materials. A native speaker of the language acts as a weekly tutor, and a qualified faculty member from another institution advises on the appropriate level of study and assesses the student’s progress with oral and written examinations

Sample Courses: Elementary Korean; Portuguese (for Romance Language Speakers) I; Elementary Hindi I; American Sign Language and Current Issues

Number of Professors: 4

Less Commonly Taught Languages Building

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Title: Student Spotlight
Less Commonly Taught Languages Building

Jourdan Khalid Hussein

Government Major, Class of '11


Why Arabic? “Arabic at Wesleyan is still a developing program which hopefully soon will transform into an important part of the nascent Middle East Studies Initiative. I personally have started to realize the importance of this world's major language, spoken in the world's most critically developing region, after I wrote a paper about Jordan's political system. Each country in the Middle East, however, speaks its own dialect of Arabic (Amiyah), while what is taught at Wesleyan is called Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha) that is used in media and literature. Arabic has become an integral part of my academic experience at Wesleyan and has propelled me to study abroad in Amman, Jordan fall of 2009.”