About Drake University Language Acquisition Program

The Drake University Language Acquisition Program offers a unique approach to language learning.

Languages offered during the 2006-2007 academic year include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

Focusing on the development of functional communicative competency, students learn to use the language rather than learning about the language. In order to foster a communicative classroom environment in which all students are active participants, course sections are limited to a maximum of four students.

Students meet for three hours a week with a native speaker of the language of study. The native speaker functions as a model and a resource person. Students also work with their Language Coordinator, a professional linguist who mentors their progress.

The use of technology is integrated throughout the program. This begins before students arrive on-campus; much of our application, placement, and registration takes place electronically. Technological competency is an ever-increasing expectation in the academic and professional world.  The Language Acquisition Program is one avenue through which students gain this experience.  Blogs are used as resources in culture learning and as the container for the electronic portfolio (ePortfolio). Students use ePortfolios to demonstrate their progress in the language and as language learners through the inclusion of audio and video clips, writing samples, reflective writing and evidence of cultural profeciency.

In their first two semesters of language study, all students take Language Learning Strategies. This one-credit course meets once a week with students from all languages. It is led by the language coordinators and is designed to guide students through beginning language study at Drake. Topics in the course include instruction on the use of: strategies to help students become more effective language learners, technology required for the program, and learning how to reflective critically on the progress one is making in the target language and on the progress one is making as a language learner.

The study of culture plays a major role for students enrolled in the Language Acquisition Program. In order to become truly proficient in a language, one must be thoroughly familiar with the culture associated with the language. Language and culture are, in fact, inseparable and must be considered in tandem*.


Studying culture in the Language Acquisition Program goes beyond the traditional memorizing of cities, rivers, etc. Our students use primarily Internet resources and blogs in order to activate higher-level thinking skills as they interact with the target culture. Students demonstrate their ever-growing cultural proficiency by including evidence in their ePortfolio of progress toward meeting the course goals for culture. The cultural goals for each language and level are stated below. Specifically, students are asked to:


  • Identify, discuss, and analyze intangible products of the culture . . . such as social, economic, and political institutions, and explore relationships among these institutions and the perspectives of the culture.
  • Give examples of social behaviors that express the target culture’s underlying value system.
  • Interpret social phenomena within the context of the target culture.
  • Describe instances of major change within the culture [being studied].

Drake University does not have a language requirement. Several programs, however, do require language study: Art History, International Business, International Relations, Vocal Performance, and the language teaching endorsement for French, German, and Spanish.  Twenty percent of our students are inrolled in these programs, with the remaining 80% studying language as an elective.

*For a more thorough treatment of the relationship between language and culture, see Renate A. Schulz’ article, “The Challenge of Assessing Cultural Understanding in the Context of Foreign Language Instruction” (Foreign Language Annals, V. 40 (1), Spring 2007).