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Competence in a foreign language is essential for an educated person. Participation in the global community is predicated on the ability to understand and appreciate cultural difference, and nothing brings this more sharply into focus than the experience of learning a foreign language. The foreign language not only affords unique access to a different culture and its ways of life and thought; it also increases awareness of one's own language and culture.
Foreign Language Requirement
Applies to both the Class of 2009 and Earlier and the Class of 2010 and Later.
While students often opt to satisfy the Language Requirement by continuing to study the language that they have already begun in high school or earlier, the wealth of languages that the University offers is such that many students decide to explore a new culture and area of our globe by beginning a foreign language that they have never studied before. French, Spanish, and sometimes German are taught at the pre-collegiate level, but students are less likely to have been exposed to Arabic, Chinese and Japanese - let alone Uzbek or Hausa - and each of these languages is a mode of access to a fascinating culture and history.
Penn is immensely proud of its language programs, the variety that they offer, and the results that students achieve in them. The Foreign Language Requirement should be considered as a clear expression of this University’s realization that effective modes of communication will be increasingly important in the 21st century.