On weeknights, voices singing the Chinese phonetic alphabet can be heard from Cherry Hall Room 221, where students are participating in Western’s first Chinese Flagship class.

The class is an intensive Chinese language program funded by a federal grant from the National Security Education Program’s Language Flagship.

The program is a five-day-a-week commitment aimed at teaching students to be professionally fluent in Chinese by the time they graduate, said Amy Eckhardt, director of the Office of Scholar Development.

“The Chinese economy grew 14 percent last year, and America’s shrank,” she said. “If you want to do anything — get a job or a promotion — knowing Chinese will help.”

Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn, said Liping Chen, academic director for Western’s Chinese Flagship Language Institute.

“Students come for various reasons — for career or personal enjoyment,” Chen said. “It is the language spoken by the biggest population in the world, and people are coming to learn it for their future.”

The program fully pays for its students to travel to China over winter break for an immersion program where they’ll study Chinese four hours every day, Eckhardt said.

Taylorsville sophomore Samuel Firkins said he took the class for the challenge, exposure to a new language and opportunity to travel abroad.

“There is an expectancy to follow through until you’re fluent,” he said.

Western is one of nine U.S. universities hosting a Language Flagship program, including universities such as Indiana University, Ohio State University and Brigham Young University, according to the Language Flagship program’s Web site.