Faculty from humanities, languages, and social sciences have redesigned selected courses in areas such as economics, history, religion and political science to allow you to do some of your coursework in Chinese, French, German, Norwegian, Russian or Spanish. Attached to each designated FLAC course is an optional foreign language component that counts as .25 credit. In the foreign language component, you read and discuss materials related to the core course, but you do so using the designated foreign language.
FLAC, then, helps you link your knowledge of a foreign language with your study of other disciplines.
Given the variety of FLAC courses, you may be able to bring together special interests you have with your foreign language background to look at the world with an awareness that goes beyond the time and place in which you live.
Since virtually all FLAC courses fulfill certain GE requirements, you'll add an extra dimension of integration to your undergraduate program. FLAC courses also help you relate your on-campus learning with your study abroad, so they're an ideal way to prepare before you go abroad or to apply what you've learned abroad when you return to campus. Finally, FLAC courses help you demonstrate your ability to use in everyday life the language skills and cultural understanding that are the basis of your foreign language requirement.
Interested? Read on. When you've successfully completed the fourth or fifth semester of college foreign language study (or its equivalent), you're eligible for the FLAC experience!
What Happens in a Foreign Language Component?
FLAC courses include two groups of students: those who do all work for the course in English only, and those who choose to do the equivalent of half their work in a foreign language. As a student enrolled in the foreign language component, to earn the additional .25 credit, you meet an extra hour each week to discuss your foreign language reading assignments in that language.
There are three different kinds of foreign language components:
1. In the "paired instructor" model--known as the "St. Olaf model" because of the pioneering efforts of the St. Olaf FLAC Program, you'll meet with two professors. The foreign language professor is responsible for the foreign language component; the professor of the core course attends as a participant.
2. In the "single instructor" model, the professor of the core course is also responsible for the foreign language component.
3. In the "readings enriched" model, the professor of the core course leads discussion in English of materials you'll read in the foreign language.
FLAC defined
