31, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 1-3
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From the Editor
ELIZABETH B.WELLES
THE advent of the new millennium has been a catalyst for much speculation about the future. Language and culture study will be influenced by many factors, including political and government actions, cultural and population shifts, the demise of old colonial structures, and the technologies that by compressing time and space are putting people in proximity to speakers of languages that they do not know. In an educational framework that is undergoing broad transformation, we have already seen changes in the way academic disciplines, departments, and instruction are organized. In the teaching of languages there have been some interesting turns: as students have become more pragmatic, they have shied away from a curriculum entirely based on literature and have opted for study that provides practical language knowledge, a sense of the preoccupations of a different culture, and a wide variety of reading matter. At the same time, critical theoretical approaches (about gender, film, colonialism, and cultural production and consumption, for example) have created new interdisciplinary directions. The knowledge of other languages is a powerful tool for exploring these intellectual relations. Language departments need to capitalize on the way knowledge is being reorganized to create programs that attract tomorrow's students.
Millennial thinking propagates reflections about the past and present as well as the future. In the first part of this issue of the ADFL Bulletin, four articles give examples of language programs that have responded to the demands of the present by combining valued traditions of teaching and scholarship with forward-looking strategic thinking, imagination, and flexibility. The articles by Jean Perkins (Swarthmore Coll.), Sylvie Debevec Henning (East Carolina Univ.), and Mark Pietralunga (Florida State Univ.) focus on life and work directing multilanguage programs, but in very different kinds of institutions. East Carolina University, located in rural North Carolina, is an expanding midsized university that has recently achieved the Carnegie ranking of Doctoral II; Florida State University, about twice the size of East Carolina, is a growing Research I university; and Swarthmore College is a prestigious small liberal arts college. The differences stand out clearly in the percentage of students studying languages at these institutions: about 8% at East Carolina, about 15% at Florida State, and about 30% at Swarthmore, according to our latest enrollment survey in the fall of 1998. The national average is 7.9% (ADFL Bulletin 31.2 [2000]: 25 [Show Article]). Florida State has declared part of its mission to be internationalization, Swarthmore has a long tradition of language and international study, and East Carolina is working within mandates of productivity in a region where the value of language study is not widely accepted. Yet despite the differences, each chair represented here remains mindful of student needs and institutional goals while finding creative ways to use the resources at hand.
Henning, examining the role of chair through her ten years of service at two institutions, finds recurring themes. At both institutions, the survival of languages in the curriculum was put in question for primarily budgetary reasons. The overarching mentality at her present institution is productivity--namely, the most cost-effective ways to teach the greatest number of students--which means that small language programs are threatened. Recent recommendations from the University of North Carolina General Administration, which Henning helped shape, indicate support for strengthening foreign language programs and redefining productivity to reflect more adequately their enrichment function. Henning describes in sobering detail the number of compromises that must be struck. To maintain some languages, some majors may be lost. Meanwhile a more pragmatic approach to the curriculum must be developed to garner needed enrollments. Henning has proved herself willing to exploit available resources. For example, despite her skepticism about distance learning, she has nonetheless risked taking advantage of the system-wide emphasis on interactive TV and Internet courses; thus she has urged faculty members to take on projects to enhance their courses with electronic media. In another example her departments joined the MLA's project on articulation, High School to College in Foreign Languages, because she believes that the survival of the department depends on building a strong base for languages in local schools. And she discovered that productivity means fund-raising as well. Her accomplishments and perspectives give real meaning to the expression "the chair as entrepreneur." As Henning says, "Chairs of departments of foreign languages and literatures can no longer afford to be simply teaching administrators. They need to be advocates, promoters, even lobbyists. Their role must be an increasingly public one, both on their campuses and in the community."
Jean Perkins's experience as chair at Swarthmore, which has a long history of excellence in teaching, complements Henning's experience at East Carolina. Advocacy and fund-raising were not as relevant to Perkins as they were to Henning, but after thirty years of experience Perkins is in position to offer sound advice on what was of paramount importance at her college--teaching. She discusses the care needed in the hiring, monitoring, and mentoring of staff members and good practice in dealing with departmental morale. She advises chairs to maintain good relations with other departments and local institutions as interdisciplinary and consortial programs become more attractive to students and to create an active profile in campus service to keep the department central to the concerns of the college's life. As the 1998 winner of the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession, Perkins has clearly taken her own advice and lived up to the model she describes.
Of the three, Mark Pietralunga chairs by far the largest program, a program committed to internationalization and service to the community. Like Henning, he was required to respond to enrollment-driven formulas. Under his direction the department made efforts to improve basic language courses and to make foreign languages more meaningful to students. Part of his approach was to train TAs through a new program that focuses on second language acquisition, the use of technology, and language across the curriculum. In German, accessibility to extra help and a chance to visit upper-level courses resulted in increased enrollments over the previous year. In Spanish, expanded offerings for a variety of professions and internships in the community have helped the department keep up with increasing enrollments. The French program, having benefitted from a generous grant that supports scholarships for students and a summer institute for teachers, is establishing an interdisciplinary center for French studies that will reach the population beyond the campus and is in the process of creating a major in French studies. To support and participate in the university's international commitment, the department implemented a minor in world literature and world film and fosters international linkages for study-abroad programs. The department has taken a long look at its position in the university and is attempting to make itself indispensable to the university's mission of internationalization and public service by contributing to the intellectual life on the campus and in the local community and by bringing global concerns and capabilities to both.
The MA program in intercultural communication directed by John Sinnigen at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, offers an alternative to the traditional MA program in language and literature. Rooted in theoretical discussion of the various meanings of culture and issues in postmodernism, it attempts to respond to the question, What are the most appropriate ways and what are the functions of engaging in the study of target languages and cultures in a world characterized by increasing diversity and a growing concentration of wealth and power? Students combine the study of a target language and intercultural communication and have the opportunity to experience the psychological, linguistic, and cultural shocks that help them become intercultural practitioners. The program incorporates concepts from linguistics and social sciences with issues about globalization as well as the diversity of the students and faculty members and acts as a kind of interdisciplinary intercultural laboratory.
Two papers with quite different topics, heritage language learners and teacher education, are grouped together here not only because they focus on the cultural and linguistic differences between Russia and the United States but also because these differences are put in relief by specifically Russian immigrant experiences. David Andrews discusses the influence and interference of English on heritage Russian speakers who are attempting to refine their language. Noting the importance of sociolinguistics for teachers of bilinguals, Andrews urges sensitivity to linguistic difference in the classroom. I was struck by his account of how émigré speakers tend to flatten out some of the famous difficulties of Russian aspect by using the word that simply means "go'' instead of the rich variety of verbs that distinguish between one-way and round trips, motion by vehicle or self-propulsion, and unidirectional or multidirectional motion. It should be greatly satisfying to students of Russian to discover that even those with long exposure to the language find these distinctions hard to keep straight. Heritage language learning has recently received considerable attention, not only in these pages (see ADFL Bulletin 29.1 [1997] [Show Issue]) but also at a conference sponsored by the National Foreign Language Center in Long Beach, California, in October 1999. From 16 to 18 June 2002 the sixth annual conference in Teaching Spanish to Native Speakers will be held in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The language community can hope that Americans will understand that these speakers of other languages constitute a valuable national resource, especially when there are limited opportunities to study languages in schools and colleges.
Serafima Gettys finds her perspective as an outsider valuable in comparing language teacher education in the former Soviet Union and the United States. She points out that here teacher education in general is treated as a craft while in Russia it is accepted as a scientific discipline. Language teaching has theories and practices distinct from the study of literature and occupies a much more prestigious place in the curriculum than it does here, where it is often seen as the necessary antecedent to the teaching of culture and literature. She concludes that both systems have advantages and, deeply rooted in each country's intellectual traditions, are unlikely to change.
Statistical studies by John Watzke on the transitions of language students from high school to college and by Richard LaFleur on enrollments in Latin and Greek treat similar populations of precollegiate and college-level students. LaFleur is guardedly optimistic about the future of classical languages in the American educational system. He notes that even while fewer college students are enrolled in classical languages, the numbers are growing in the K-12 levels, a factor that should influence the study of classics in college. He speculates that TV programs based on the classical world and the well-received translation of Homer by Robert Fagles may have stirred a broader public awareness of ancient Greece and Rome. If TV watchers become Latin students, fine. But the language itself should be enough since its study improves knowledge of English, hones logical thinking, and opens a historical window on a crucial piece of Western civilization.
While practitioners in the field of foreign languages consider it obvious that longer sequences of study produce better results, efforts to achieve this longue durée, especially the smooth transition between high school and college, are difficult to implement. I am familiar with these difficulties--and also with some excellent strategies for overcoming them through the MLA's own above-mentioned articulation project, which is drawing to a close this spring. Watzke discusses the results of a national study that tracks students from eighth grade through the first two years of college. His findings strengthen arguments for working on articulation and advocating early language learning: students who study languages in high school are the most likely to go on to study languages in college. He believes, and I agree, that it is very much worth the while for higher education to work for more and better precollegiate language study and suggests that restructured college entrance requirements (always a great motivator) and inventive ways of fulfilling them might encourage schools to offer more upper-level course work. Further, earlier immersion and study-abroad programs for college students from a wide variety of interests connect students to their previous learning and increase the potential for them to attain greater language competency.
This issue of the ADFL Bulletin carries tributes to two longtime and exceptional members of our field, Jean Perkins and Richard Brod. What could be more suitable at a time when we are thinking about the future than to thank those who have helped bring us to the present? The essays in honor of Jean Perkins derive from a 1999 MLA convention session dedicated to her accomplishments. David Harrison writes about her as an inspirational teacher who taught him to discover the way the study of French could bring meaning to his life or, rather, how to cultivate his own intellectual and linguistic garden. Renée Waldinger writes as a colleague and describes Perkins's distinction as a scholar of the eighteenth century, her leadership in that field, her generous contributions to countless panels and review boards, her service on committees, and her willingness to take on onerous tasks such as the presidency of the MLA. Her career will stand as a model for younger colleagues well into our new century. For thirty years at the MLA Richard Brod was instrumental in defining the way the field of foreign language education conducts its business. In recollecting Richard, we revisit many of the important events of the profession. The twenty-four brief encomiums offer vignettes of his career and examples of his opera et dicta, along with recurring references to his humor, good character, and outstanding professional competence. Without the dedicated service of these colleagues (and others like them), the future of language study in the United States would not have a structure on which to build.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 31, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 1-3 |
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