TO THE EDITOR:
I am writing in response to the Nov. 11 letter concerning the Spanish for the Professions minor. The writer thought the Spanish professors were “deficient in their attention to students.” I could not disagree more. The small class sizes allowed me to develop meaningful relationships with the professors and students with whom I spent three semesters.
The student was critical of the testing style of the Spanish for the Professions minor, particularly of fill-in-the-blank, asking, “In what settings will we ever have to fill in the blank?”
In fact, during my time working as an intern with CVS/Pharmacy, I have been able to communicate vital medication information to Spanish-speaking patients because I knew the basic sentence structure and had to only recall the correct medical Spanish term. In addition, the minor does an outstanding job preparing students for using Spanish in the professional world.
Besides from practicing interviewing and other professional communication skills in Spanish, I had the opportunity in the experiential education capstone course to work in the community teaching ESL to Spanish-speakers every Saturday through the local organization ISLA. Not only was this one of my most rewarding experiences as a student at UNC, but it vastly improved my conversation skills. There is no doubt that my medical Spanish minor also greatly helped me while applying to pharmacy school. Personally, I would recommend the minor to everyone.
Andrew Haberkorn
Eshelman School of Pharmacy
