Exclusive MIT adds Korean to regular language courses

By Park Si-soo

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will add Korean to its regular for-credit language courses from the fall semester, enabling students to learn about Korean systematically amid increasing demand for the Asian language in the prominent U.S. tech/science university.

The Boston-based school has worked for four years to put Korean language courses into its regular foreign language program.

“Korean language courses are indeed officially being added to MIT’s current language course offerings starting this fall semester, and this is the first time MIT has offered Korean,” Matt Burt, managing director of the MIT-Korea Program, told The Korea Times. “It’s a very exciting development as new languages are of course very rarely added to MIT’s existing offerings, and our current foreign language offerings are relatively small.”

So far, MIT has offered informal non-credit Korean classes taught by Korean-speaking MIT student volunteers and Korean professors at nearby Wellesley College, he said.

“These courses have been an unqualified success for the past two years, with every entry-level course being oversubscribed and almost all students progressing to the next class level,” Burt said.

“As a result of this success, and with interest in Korea and Korean language clearly at a high level at MIT, MIT’s Global Studies and Languages Section -- under the leadership of Professor Emma Teng -- has decided to launch a new Korean language program beginning in the fall semester 2016.”