This Friday, the new building of the Language and Humanities Department, the English Language Institute and the English Learning Lab will be opened during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 in the morning
Students are already attending classes in the building, which is furnished with new computer systems, multimedia equipment and office furniture.
The NMC Foundation, a non-profit organization composed of community volunteers, primarily from the business sector, funded the purchase of the equipment.
The current foundation president is Ben Babauta, assistant general manager for operations at Duty Free Shop Saipan.
He said their group is dedicated to improving higher education in the CNMI by encouraging private and public support for NMC.
The foundation also purchased the Rosetta Stone Computer Software that will be used in the English Learning Lab.
The software utilizes a combination of images, text, and sound, with difficulty levels increasing as the student progresses, in order to teach various vocabulary terms and grammatical functions intuitively.
NMC, in a statement, said its Languages and Humanities Department addresses the growing and diverse language needs of the CNMI, and offers courses in humanities that emphasize critical thinking skills.
The department’s English Language Institute provides listening and speaking, reading and vocabulary, as well as writing and grammar classes.
The course serves students with limited English ability and those with advanced developmental English skills
The department also offers an English program on college composition, research paper writing, creative writing, and technical writing for criminal justice majors.
It likewise offers classes in languages such as Carolinian, Chamorro, Chinese, Japanese, American Sign Language and Spanish, as well as courses in the humanities such as literature, speech and philosophy.
