This time last year, I was 5,000 miles south of St. Louis, navigating the city of Santiago, Chile, studying alongside students of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and living with a family that welcomed me as one of its own. After six months, Chile and the people I developed relationships with became a new home.

Thousands of students each year choose to study abroad, with various motivations, but I wager if you were to ask language majors why they go abroad, the overwhelming majority would say, “I want to be able to speak the language.” It is a valid reason and a category I fell into before my time down in South America. The real importance, though, is the results: results that speak to the necessity of requiring all language majors to have spent time immersed in the culture and the language they wish to pursue.

When I am asked where I learned Spanish, I have some trouble answering. Technically, I learned it in school: six years of Spanish instruction in high school and at Washington University before I headed to Chile. In reality, I learned more Spanish (albeit Chilean in its dialect) in the six months I spent studying abroad than I ever did in years of Spanish courses. This is not to discount the level of instruction offered by Wash. U. professors, but there is no way to truly learn a language without immersion in a native-speaking culture.

Without being forced to interact with native speakers, it is difficult to realize that there is a huge disparity between classroom-based and everyday language learning. There is an emphasis on grammar in classrooms, which is of course necessary, but to attain fluency, there must be an innate understanding for what just “sounds right.” There are phrases you say in a particular fashion not because of some rule—because most likely the phrase does not follow a set grammatical rule—but because it “sounds correct.” This instinctive understanding and subconscious learning is a direct product of hearing the language in its native environment, which can easily be accomplished in study abroad environment. Even if students are not required to speak the native language at all times, the language still constantly surrounds them.

More significant to language learning than these basic interactions is a cultural element that absolutely cannot be duplicated in a classroom setting. For example, there are slang terms that are highly dependent on social context and the culture of the country. It was certainly a challenge to grasp all of the new Chilean slang, along with learning when it was and was not appropriate to use certain phrases and words. This does not mean that language classrooms should discontinue cultural teachings: they are a fantastic way to give students a background understanding. Language is not just words; there are cultural connotations to every thing we say.

Of course, many would argue that requiring experience abroad would limit educational opportunities for the many students at Wash. U. Still, study abroad should not be confined to six-week summer studies or semester-long exchange programs and should seek to include other opportunities such as service trips. More significantly, if a university wants students to represent its name globally, there needs to be a level of assurance that these students are true “masters” of their area of study. In order to truly master their subject, students need to expand their fluency in both language and culture far beyond the classroom.