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Funding Opportunities

A native English-speaker once said: "Sure everyone else in the world speaks English –except when they’re talking about us.” This statement drives home the notion that in the global marketplace, while English speakers may enjoy an edge, those who speak only English are at a great disadvantage. Yet business school programs typically place little emphasis on training their students in foreign languages, due at least in part to the lack of time in the curriculum for additional language and culture training. In her article on “The Competitive Advantage of Foreign Languages and Cultural Knowledge,” Uber Grosse notes the stark contrast between the dearth of language requirements in graduate level international business programs, and the clear demand for foreign language skills in the workplace, as shown in the research (Modern Language Journal 2004, autumn). One solution is to mesh business content and practices with foreign language education by integrating one into the other.

But such curricular development and integration does not come easy. Language faculty are not typically familiar with business content, and materials for such programs – if they exist at all – are often of mediocre quality, inappropriate for classroom learning, or too costly to purchase. Faculty, particularly those in the less commonly taught languages, do not have the resources, support, or time to commit to developing good materials. The proposed program on business languages provides a solution by offering GW language faculty the resources, training, and support needed to integrate business content into their curriculum. By working with and supplementing other existing GW and DoE-funded programs, the project will then make these materials and knowledge available to others, both within the university and beyond.

The proposed programmatic element focuses on the less commonly taught languages –including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Russian – also referred to as “critical languages” as they are linked to countries viewed as actors that play a critical role in matters of international trade and U.S. security. Our emphasis on these languages stems from:

Our particularly unique approach is to integrate into these new courses and materials the rich international resources at our fingertips in the nation’s capital, and then make these available to others across the region and country.