The University of North Texas is offering month-long Russian and Chinese classes completely free for high school juniors and seniors, and community college and UNT students.
The program is called STARTALK, a language-immersion course funded by the National Security Agency to encourage the teaching of critical-need languages.
The Chinese and Russian classes each have 24 students who were selected based on their academic performance, letter of recommendation from a teacher and interest in learning Chinese or Russian.
The classes are held on the UNT campus from June 4 to June 29 and are taught completely in the new languages. Classes run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. In that time, students do things like morning exercise, traditional cooking classes, crafts, music, dance and field trips.
At the end of the course, UNT students have the opportunity to earn up to six credit hours. STARTALK said it believes if more students learn critical-need languages, it will solidify national security and global economic competitiveness for years to come.
