31, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 1-3
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From the Editor
Elizabeth B. Welles
OVER the last several months the MLA has been planning a much needed expansion of the MLA International Bibliography into two quite different territories, west Asia (often referred to as the Middle East) and teaching. It is well know that the "bib" covers the literatures of most Western nations quite thoroughly but does not do so well by the literature of Asia. Further, it does not include publications that focus only on pedagogy. Fortunately, support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has put the MLA in a position to fill these lacunae. In the fall of 2000, specialists in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish literatures and linguistics will begin to develop lists of book publishers and journals, obtain materials in and about these languages, and start indexing the publications.
The second part of the expanded scope, pedagogy, has also long been a desideratum of both the field as well as of the MLA. Over the last two decades, teaching has become a vibrant and important research area. The need to base methodological, programmatic, and institutional decisions on an informed understanding of what works in the classroom and why it works has been complicated and further fueled by legislators' demands for accountability from teachers and by educational and political leaders' demands for increased attention to teaching. It is obvious that the absence of bibliographic tools has become critical. While various kinds of bibliographic information have been in existence for some time--the LLBA (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts), ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, and the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric--no comprehensive resource has been available. To begin this work, MLA members with specific expertise are working in three committees, one on the teaching of language, one on the teaching of literature, and one on the teaching of composition, to develop a classification system for indexing articles and books. The topics and terms will cover, for example, the teaching of writing, language, and literature; curriculum; testing; research on teaching; theories of teaching; classroom practices; textbooks; technology; and the history of the field.
Of particular interest to readers of this journal will be those parts of the bibliography devoted to foreign languages and cultures. The classification systems the language pedagogy committee has considered will be initially based on the ACTFL Annual Bibliography of Books and Articles on Pedagogy in Foreign Languages, published from 1968 to 1976 simultaneously by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Foreign Language Annals and by the MLA as the fourth volume of the foreign language issue of the MLA International Bibliography--except for 1974, when the ACTFL bibliography was published by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL). Thus it seems appropriate that the MLA again take up this responsibility: it stands to produce not only an authoritative tool for the field but also an international database that will make apparent the issues, focuses, and activities in foreign and second language education.
Readers may be curious about this early collaboration between the MLA and ACTFL, since it represents a fusion of language and literature teaching that these days is sometimes thought to be lacking under a single institutional aegis. The founding of ACTFL in 1966 was part of a vigorous program initiated in 1952 to promote foreign language teaching in the American educational system. The MLA first helped found three regional language meetings: the Pacific Northwest Council on the Teaching of Languages in 1949, the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 1954, and the Southern Conference on Language Teaching in 1965. (The Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Southwest Conference on Foreign Languages were to come later, in 1969 and 1981.) In 1966, the MLA Executive Council, recognizing the interest in the study of foreign languages that had developed in the previous decade, initiated a new individual membership organization, ACTFL, with its own journal, Foreign Language Annals. The purpose of the new organization was to provide an institutional center for the growing professionalism among teachers and to serve all foreign languages at all levels. The MLA agreed to house and support the new organization until such time as it could become self-sufficient ("Policy Statement"). In 1977 an independent ACTFL moved into its own offices as originally planned.
The MLA's foreign language efforts in the 1950s and 1960s were not limited to the founding of ACTFL. The MLA established the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) in 1969 to support (in case, readers, you didn't know) the work of language departments in colleges and universities. The MLA also sponsored the earliest programs of CAL and ERIC Clearinghouse in Languages and Linguistics, whose overall purpose was to disseminate research in applying linguistic science to practical language problems. CAL soon separated from the MLA, moving to Washington, DC, where as a nonprofit private organization it supports research in language teaching and learning through a number of funded projects, such as the ERIC clearinghouse, which it has administered since 1974, and the current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) development of a foreign language test for the nation's high schools. The founding of ACTFL and ADFL, as well as the creation of ERIC and CAL, established the frame in which our profession has grown, and in many senses flourished, in the last three decades. The field of foreign language education clearly has many more needs than can practically be met by a single professional association, but in consequence this division of labor among associations and agencies has sometimes reinforced the tendency toward a disciplinary division between language teaching and literature teaching that is neither practical nor beneficial.
In the spirit of cooperation within the field, we have attempted to call the attention of our colleagues in higher education, many with a career-long investment in the study of literature, to the ACTFL collaborative standards project, which consists of the original generic Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (ACTFL, 1996), and the new language-specific Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the Twenty-First Century in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish (ACTFL, 1999). Through the Forum here and in the fall 1999 ADFL Bulletin, through the papers in this issue, previous issues, and conference sessions, we hope to promote dialogue, even controversy, about these documents. If the Standards and these publications about them become a catalyst for opening up conversation about the best ways to teach young adults, they will have gone a long way toward blurring the boundaries between levels of schooling and among language teaching, literature teaching, and culture teaching.
The papers here take up the problematics of applying the Standards to higher education programs. It is hardly a surprise that the point toward which the current propels the discussion is literature. Gwendolyn Barnes-Karol, Doris Y. Kadish, and Holly Tucker agree that since the first version of the Standards was intended as a guide for precollegiate teachers, it is understandable that so little space was given to the study of literature per se and that literature is treated as only one of many cultural artifacts. However, since, as Tucker argues, most college-level programs are based on literature, "the ambiguities regarding literature in Standards-based instruction must also be addressed." It is fitting that the task of filling this gap should be taken on by teachers of literature from colleges and universities. Our authors propose various ways that the Standards can modify the professorial approach to literature in the classroom. For example, acquaintance with the Standards led Kadish to propose that literature "be treated as a means to achieving communicative and cultural competence," that it be "recast as 'applied literature'" in a program in which language, literature, and culture can be integrated in all courses. Barnes-Karol echoes these ideas and adds the notion of literature teaching as cultural process. Tucker expands on the idea of personal response by encouraging "students to look not only downward at the text but also outward around the text to its contexts [...] and inward toward themselves." But faculty members may need incentives to look on literature teaching in a set of different relations to linguistic and cultural modes of inquiry. Kadish recommends that literature faculty be made to understand that "they can have an intellectual stake in the implementation of the Standards, by bringing discussions in line with current literary and theoretical trends in their fields." She goes on to say that such an approach might initiate a means of bringing language and literature components of a department closer together. As if following Kadish's lead, Tucker and Barnes-Karol give richly detailed examples of how literary theory and Standards-based classroom practice promote active reading experiences with the text as well as interactions with other members of the class. Literature assumes an authentic communicative role between the student and the culture whether past or present, while remaining the voice of the most respected linguistic and aesthetic documents of that culture. The Forum on the Standards offers, as it did in the fall 1999 ADFL Bulletin, a wide variety of perspectives from teachers in schools of education, secondary schools, and two- and four-year colleges. In this issue these contributors touch on the pivotal need for better teacher preparation, longer sequences of language learning from the earliest year of schooling through high school and beyond, closer articulation among levels of schooling, and stronger administrative support to enable the implementation of the Standards framework.
The three articles by Anthony G. Dahl, Russell A. Berman, and Geraldine Cleary Nichols turn to some of the other important issues in higher education that have emerged in the last decade: the small presence of minorities in the study of foreign languages, the growth of Spanish enrollments, and the public perception of foreign language education. Dahl, who teaches at Spelman College, a small liberal arts college for African American women, attributes the growing enrollments in languages at his institution to the willingness of the language faculty to attend to student needs, interests, and specific black heritage. While he admits that Spelman has the advantage of an all-black student population with above-average foreign language preparation from which to recruit students, Dahl suggests numerous strategies that could be useful for attracting students of color to languages in predominately white colleges. Nichols, speaking from the strength of a vital Spanish program at her university, faces the reality posed by a paucity of resources, which are usually designated for the rising numbers of students in Spanish courses as enrollments dwindle in other languages. Going a step further, Nichols offers cogent practical advice on how the strength of Spanish can be deployed to help other languages, because, as she says, "If even one of the languages now taught on our campuses were to founder, it would impoverish us all."
Berman takes up a more ambiguous reality, the opinion of others about foreign language departments and teaching especially on the college campus. As he points out, while there is much support nationwide for learning languages other than English, there are questions about whether knowing anything but English is really necessary, even in this climate of internationalization and globalization. Berman takes seriously the criticism about the level of student competency our programs produce. He suggests that our image problem would improve if we could assure our constituencies that we can provide college graduates with advanced language skills. Contending that a high-quality program well presented to students, other faculty members, and the campus as a whole is the best way to defend and promote language study, Berman outlines several steps for instituting departmental goals, curriculum, and collaboration for achieving excellence in undergraduate education and for broadcasting these results to all the interested publics.
The reports on the surveys on PhD placement and foreign language enrollments speak for themselves. Both studies show very little overall change from the previous surveys: placements to tenure-track positions have decreased 3.3% since 1993-94, and the enrollments in languages have increased 4.8% since 1995. PhD placements not surprisingly follow the trends of undergraduate enrollments, with Spanish holding the lion's share. The change shows up in the details, which are pointed out in the text and graphic presentations. I have one caveat about the enrollment survey, in response to a conclusion that is often drawn in error on the basis of a quick read. Routinely, the number of students per hundred is published (table 3), but this percentage must be understood as a snapshot of the moment in the fall of 1998 when the registrations were recorded. The number does not mean that only 7.9% of the student body has ever studied a foreign language in college. In fact, where there are foreign language requirements for graduation, almost every student will have taken at least one foreign language course. I would like to alert you also to a new study by CAL, which shows that language education in elementary and secondary programs is on the rise (Rhodes and Branaman). We hope that students entering college with language experience will continue their studies, as they are our best source of continuing and advanced learners. I am encouraged to see that registrations of undergraduates in four-year colleges, which in our last survey accounted for the decline of enrollments overall, recovered and showed a slight increase. I hope this increase is the beginning of a strong trend. The trend that is clearly strong is the tradition of professional discussion and debate through which, as this Bulletin issue demonstrates, the field continues to hone its understanding and explore the many possibilities of the best way to do its job.
"Policy Statement by the Modern Language Association Executive Council on the Creation of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages." PMLA 82 (1967): A14-A18.
Rhodes, Nancy C., and Lucinda E. Branaman. Foreign Language Instruction in the United States: A National Survey of Elementary and Secondary Schools. Prepared by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. McHenry: Center for Applied Linguistics; Delta Systems, 1999.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 31, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 1-3 |
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