34, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 1-2
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From the Editor
AS MANY readers of this journal are aware, the language-learning consciousness of the American public has been raised by the events of September 11. However, for language-department chairs, the way to take advantage of this situation is full of contradictions. On the one hand, the government is interested in supporting language learning—of languages that are strategically important to national security, such as Arabic, Persian, Farsi, and Pashto. On the other hand, higher education institutions, particularly state-funded ones, often do not support small language programs, and so far programs that teach those languages currently considered vital for national security have tended to remain small. Furthermore, as educators we may find it difficult to subscribe to the rationale that languages need be learned and taught in terms defined by national security agencies. We in the field of languages, literatures, and cultures therefore have the complicated task of turning a limited interest into a larger opportunity based on a more encompassing view of linguistic and cultural knowledge.
This task is eloquently framed and explicated by the MLA’s 2003 president, Mary Louise Pratt, in the first article of this ADFL Bulletin. Presenting ideas that she began to outline well before September 2001, she argues that today’s emphasis on languages for security can be the stimulus for a “broader opening for a new public idea about language, language learning, multilingualism, and citizenship.” She urges language and culture educators who understand the importance of this knowledge beyond the value defined by national security to advocate for this change in understanding. “If a new public idea is vigorously asserted, it can generate resources that will help make its promise a reality.” Pratt describes four common misconceptions embedded in American attitudes about languages other than English and proposes four ways to promote activities that will create a positive context for learning languages and nurturing a multilingual society. Arguing forcefully for the identification and support of talented language learners, she calls on higher education language specialists to be the standard-bearers for the advanced competency that adults need to function in social, political, and intellectual interactions. She recommends that educational systems reach out to heritage language communities in ways that will benefit the learners and promote national expertise. One misconception she exposes is that Americans are hostile to speakers of other languages. She has listened with a keen ear to many interchanges involving language in government offices, taxi cabs, and public meetings that have led her to conclude that Americans are not so much hostile to speakers of other languages as they are ambivalent. She notes, however, that so far only one part of this ambivalence has found a public voice, that of the English-only movement; but, as she says, “it’s time to mobilize the other side.”
The next four essays concern overcoming a linguistic and cultural distance that has been thought of as mission impossible: learning Japanese. In the first of these, Seiichi Makino, the recipient of the 2001 ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession, explains some of the inextricable interdependencies between Japanese language and culture. The spatial terms uchi (inside) and soto (outside) denote not only the inside and outside of a house but also the expanding concentric circles of social familiarity and appropriate terms of address to family, colleagues, and strangers. As Makino points out, the predominance of uchi in the language and its relation to other Japanese cultural concepts demonstrates the value the Japanese place on empathy and dependence on others. The spatial concepts of these terms that govern the protocols of Japanese life are also expressed by grammatical structures that have no direct equivalents in English.
Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Yukiko A. Hatasa, and Phyllis Larson number themselves among the fortunate to have profited from Makino’s guidance as a teacher and mentor. As Rodd observes, Makino’s professional accomplishments parallel in many ways the growth and successes of the field of Japanese studies. Hatasa underlines Makino’s pivotal role as a scholar of Japanese language, through the publication of two dictionaries of Japanese grammar and two pioneering textbooks and through an exemplary teaching career, most notably at the Middlebury College Language Schools and at the pedagogical institutes he created at Columbia and Princeton Universities. Rodd shows how early on Makino encouraged Japanese teachers to collaborate with professionals in other languages. He helped formulate the OPI in Japanese, and, thanks to his efforts, Japanese has a voice in the development of teacher standards. Larson notes that his work in establishing the Japanese proficiency guidelines made it indeed seem that Japanese was actually part of the mainstream of languages taught in American schools. No longer considered unique or impossible to learn, Japanese appeals to digital-age students through pop culture and video games. Although teachers must sometimes reinvent themselves to reach students no longer attracted to the field by classical literature, they are well prepared because of the groundwork Makino has laid. All three of these professionals agree that Makino is a superb teacher whose intellectual energy, generous contributions to the field, and unaffected humility are an example to all.
Each of the articles in the next cluster, on study abroad, offers a distinctive addition to our knowledge about program design or research in this area. Jenifer K. Ward describes two programs based on service learning at the Centers of Lutheran Reformation in Germany. Her home institution, Gustavus Adolphus College, has a Lutheran legacy that includes spiritual and ethical dimensions to learning and a commitment to service within the liberal arts curriculum. The experiences of her students volunteering with refugees, performing service in a community, and working in a monastery demanded that they use their German. The students not only fulfilled community needs but also forged individual relationships, and these personal connections helped them reflect on global and economic issues that they never could have understood from classroom lectures. She urges keeping “the bowl of expectations” small at the beginning of the program to achieve realistic goals and measuring success not against an external standard but against local institutional and departmental missions. In following the progress of her students back to campus, she suggests ways of integrating their experiences into the life of the college. Although she does not recommend her program as a model for all institutions, she identifies lessons she has learned and the abundance of benefits that accrued from her approach.
Jane Parish Yang writes about a different setting for authentic language experience. She describes an internship program at Lawrence University in which liberal arts students interact with businesses in China. Building Bridges with Practical Chinese, funded by the National Security Education Program, is an experimental program that taught both students and faculty members much about what they could expect from such an experience. Through student reports Yang was able to document the kinds of tasks students were asked to perform, which ranged from coordinating an office relocation to doing a computer inventory. The information in these reports helped her better prepare students for internship by providing them with expanded vocabulary and introducing them to skills, office practices, and technology that they might find useful in their work in China. Although students’ knowledge of Chinese had to be fairly advanced to qualify for the program, Yang notes that on their return, students were even better readers and speakers and were eager to read literary texts and study a variety of other subjects. She concludes that their foray into the world of commerce strengthened their education in the liberal arts.
Although many language professionals believe that study abroad has a signal and positive impact on language achievement, as described in the two previous papers, Barbara Freed, Sufumi So, and Nicole A. Lazar contend that little empirical evidence supports this claim. Therefore they studied the differences in language gain in French among two groups of students, those who studied abroad and those who remained at home to study in the college classroom. Six nonteacher native speakers compared the oral and written fluency of both groups of students. The judges’ rationale for assessing fluency was tested against grammatical, lexical, and discourse elements that seemed to have influenced their decisions. The study’s results show that the context of language learning is a factor in what oral and written features a student acquires.
Of broader professional interest are two MLA ad hoc committee reports published in this issue, one on the implications for the academy of the changes in scholarly publishing, and the other on the preparation of graduate students for their careers. “The Future of Scholarly Publishing” has been discussed in many quarters, and I bring you some insights aired by MLA members who have gathered in our offices for meetings of various continuing committees. Many university presses, suffering from reduced support from their institutions, are no longer in a position to publish highly specialized works of scholarship, like the monograph, that have few readers outside a narrow field and are unlikely to turn a profit. The question, then, about the validity of such a book as a standard for achieving tenure is much debated. Is the book the best sign of intellectual worth? Is it the best project for a person at the beginning of a career? While in many colleges and universities the book-for-tenure requirement has not been the rule, in institutions where it is required, proposing alternatives (a series of articles, electronic publication, leadership of a research seminar) may seem like lowering the standard. Members also see that the diversification of scholarly fields makes evaluation of intellectual quality much more difficult for members of tenure committees whose approaches to scholarship were formed when the prerogatives were very different from those of the aspiring assistant professor today. Thus tenure committees look to the publication of a book by a university press as an external seal of approval of its intellectual quality. On a slightly different note, there is a general concern about the university publishers’ need for profitability. The fear is that scholars will choose their subjects according to marketability rather than to the circulation of serious research and knowledge. This development will surely change not only habits of scholarship but also teaching and the curriculum.
The report “Professionalization in Perspective” investigates how the continuing oversupply of PhDs in relation to the number of academic positions available in colleges and universities affects graduate education. Because of the competitive job market, the urgency graduate students feel to produce works of professional sophistication, such as conference presentations and journal articles, has become burdensome. The report summarizes opinions about the meaning of professionalization and about the roles that institutions, departments, and graduate students themselves share in the responsibility for the development of professionalization. It gives a realistic and comprehensive view of graduate education in relation to research, teaching, the job search, and the future career. While most students in the humanities enter graduate school to join a college-level faculty, the authors are careful to include information about possibilities outside the academy as well. I recommend this report not only to graduate students and those who teach and mentor them but also to those who hire them and to undergraduate faculty members who advise their students about embarking on the glorious but hazardous path to a doctorate and an academic career.
Elizabeth B. Welles
© 2003 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 34, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 1-2 |
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