Letter/Email to a Mentor Dear

¶ … Letter/Email to a Mentor Dear Mr. X: You always told me that the best business ideas are the simplest ideas. Great ideas seem so natural, so self-evident that everyone who hears the idea is surprised no one has come up with the idea before. I believe that distance foreign language education for business students and executives, through the use of online courses, is such an idea.

I cannot credit my own creativity for this idea so much as the fact that only recently has the technology has been developed to make such learning possible, affordable, and fun. Today, more and more individuals are turning to the Internet to further their graduate-level education, by obtaining certification in various computer disciplines, to earning MBAs. CDs that teach students new languages at every level of proficiency are flying off of bookstore shelves.

We live in a global economy where soon it will be almost impossible to function without traveling abroad. Ideally, all executives and mangers should know at least one foreign language, or at least be familiar with the language where he or she must travel to and from for business on a frequent basis.

But how many people can recall the language they studied, for a few years at best, in high school or as an undergraduate? Furthermore, they may have not studied the language with a specifically business-oriented emphasis, or not studied the language of the land where their company is based. But they are too busy to go back to school, much less take a time-intensive introductory foreign language course.

Thus, I intend to propose the development of a new, online distance education course to one of the leading online universities, the University of Phoenix. The materials will be downloadable and interactive, and also feature tests and compositions so that students can gain fluency in a new language, specifically with a business emphasis. This will be ideal for busy professional who want to study a foreign language but have little time and want the language to be immediately useful in their daily lives.

Also, the individual will receive certification in the language at different levels, as well as credit and a grade at the university, so this opportunity will be a resume-builder as well. Thus my proposal's intention is to secure this classes' inclusion into the regular university curriculum and to gain the necessary funding for the course materials and teachers.

To do so, I will first present information to the university representatives from the current business and MBA programs that specifically relates to the importance of knowing a foreign language in today's global economy. I will make an interactive on-screen computer presentation demonstrating the fun and effective use of the new technology. Obviously, the representatives believe in the value of online education, but they may be skeptical about the ability to learn a foreign language online.

Once they see how fun the talking and reinforcing programs for learning such languages can be, even when they convey a business vocabulary, I am certain I can win them over. I feel that my own foreign language experience and studying abroad, and my use of the occasional foreign language phrase and anecdotes from my own experiences will reinforce the points I will make, which must be backed up with statistics about the necessity for businesspeople to learn a foreign language. My objective is twofold -- to show the.