Starting next semester the Office of International Exchange & International Education will offer primer courses in Korean, Italian and Polish language studies. Interested students should step up to OIE&IE for registration.

This year, although Kyungnam University of Korea has offered 2 exchange student vacancies and Warsaw University, Poland, has one exchange student position available, TKU students still turn cold feet and feel reluctant to apply for lack of proper language background.

The students’ misgivings may be well grounded, but OIE&IE think otherwise; they feel it a shame to let this golden opportunity go rot, because it took them painstaking effort to create these 3 vacancies.

OIE&IE assumed that students are afraid of entering an entirely alienated environment where they don’t speak a word of the host country’s language, let alone mixing with the local people, including roommates. So, to solve this urgent problem, the only way is to give a proper language breakthrough to potential students. Once their language barrier is removed, they may feel rest assured to blaze their trails in foreign studies.

This decisive move of OIE&IE is also motivated by another ulterior reason. It seems a bygone conclusion that there are always more than enough apples in the orchard than the pickers. The nucleus of the problem is the language. If we can implement a foreign language program by hiring competent language teachers outside TKU to man it, maybe the student dearth problem can be solved once and for all.