There are myriad career paths for someone who knows a second or third language — translator, tour guide, travel adviser and foreign service officer, to name a few. Proficiency in another language can also lead to higher earnings and can make a prospective employee more marketable, especially in industries like hospitality and healthcare. But several UD students are interested in a career perhaps a little less glamorous but much more fulfilling: teaching.

“I've always loved learning, and I really value education,” said Macy Morozin, a junior Spanish education major. “I want to be a teacher not only to help others learn about languages and other cultures, but to also spread my love for that and hopefully inspire more students to also recognize their own passions and their own interests.”

At UD, a world language education student will take as many language courses as a general language major. Students are essentially a language major with an education concentration, allowing them to have a much richer experience with the content.

“We have language professors who are experts in phonetics, phonology, cultural literature and other content areas that our students get to take classes with and interact with, so they have a much richer experience with the content and greater content knowledge by being a language major with an education concentration,” said Basia Moltchanov, assistant professor of Spanish and world language pedagogy in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. “I think that's really where UD excels.”

In addition to language courses, students will take pedagogy courses through the School of Education as well as classes through the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures that are specific to teaching language acquisition. 

“It's a very good mix of theory and practice at the same time,” Acevedo said of the world language education program at UD. “The classes themselves have been nothing short of amazing. The faculty are here for us, they care about our success and they want us to be able to be really good world language educators when we go into the field.”

Second language acquisition is different from first language acquisition (how babies learn to talk), so UD world language education courses focus on what research has shown to be the best methods of teaching language in a classroom setting.

“There are a variety of contexts in which you can learn a second language, but we really focus on what it means to learn a language in the classroom,” Moltchanov said. “Students learn how to make a classroom as impactful as possible for those who are learning a language. We're teaching future educators how to teach in a classroom setting. That means their students have to have enough exposure to the language and enough practice with using the language, and are doing it in a way that’s going to mimic as closely as possible having meaningful interactions with a speaker of the languages being learned.”

Getting future educators into the classroom as early and often as possible is key to preparing successful teachers. At UD, students can go out into the field as early as their first year on campus and have the opportunity all four years to observe or teach in a classroom.

Brooke Meadowcroft, a senior French education and political science double major, has taught French to high school students in Delaware and also taught English to elementary school students while studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France, last semester.

“Teaching English to French students filled my cup so much — I loved it,” she said. “Teaching in France was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced. Seeing their faces light up when they learned was extremely fulfilling.”