Students and Language Learning: A Survey

Abstract

Students at the University of Iceland report that the study of languages brings professional benefit. Many of them would like to increase their foreign language skills if that could be better built into their programs This is the result of a survey made by the Social Science Research Institute for the Faculty of Languages and Cultures. This paper points out that most faculties at the University of Iceland make it difficult or impossible to study a foreign language as a part of a degree program, even when the students are interested in such a combination and the benefit can easily be shown. The authors of this paper show that the funding structure of the University of Iceland directly prevents students from increasing and deepening their knowledge of regions, cultures and languages. The authors conclude that these limitations reduce the quality of the study programs at the University and that system change is necessary to enable students to build language skills into their professional training and academic study.