04, no. 3 (March 1973): 50-56 To the Editor Search

---

Table of Contents

Previous Article Next Article

No Works Cited

THANKS to the little publicized efforts of about a hundred dedicated individuals, a quiet revolution has been taking place in the U.S. over the past ten years in the field of language education.

In the spring of 1972, at nearly fifty colleges and universities from coast to coast, over 1000 men and women were busy learning to speak Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Swahili or one of twenty-one other languages, for full credit, without classroom instruction of any kind.

Working only with commercially available texts and tapes, and with native-speaking drill-masters recruited from among the thousands of foreign students studying in this country, each was preparing for an intensive end-of-term proficiency exam given by an experienced consulting specialist from language centers like Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Michigan. Thanks to this rapidly expanding concept, it is now possible for bright students to take, without ever leaving their own campus, a 2–3 year sequence of work in a language that would formerly have been completely unavailable to them. And what is even more remarkable is this: even with only two or three students in a program, that program pays for itself. ¹

Rationale for the Program

Pioneered ten years ago with USOE support, when this writer was chairman of foreign languages at a small liberal arts college in Michigan, the concept of self-instruction in languages rests on a series of basic propositions:

1. Acquisition of basic language skills requires an enormous amount of individual practice.
2. The practical command of a language is, initially at least, more important than a theoretical understanding of it.
3. Students have different degrees of motivation and ability and different learning rates. They should not be lock-stepped.
4. Not all students can profit from the study of one of the less commonly taught languages, but those that can and are highly motivated should be given the opportunity to do so no matter where they are attending college.
5. Limited resources of manpower and funding make tiny classes prohibitively expensive. Since a professional language teacher's time is both valuable and limited, his specialized knowledge is clearly employed to better advantage in higher level courses for the more advanced students of literature, culture or composition, than in monitoring the directed responses of rank beginners.
6. Given that effective elementary language training tends to be both time-consuming and highly repetitious, most classroom activity can be economically replaced by the cassette tape recorder for individual practice and by untrained native speakers for group review and for the individual feedback that no tape can provide. Grammar explanations can be safely left to the textbook.
7. A student who has access to a tape recorder in his own room and can work whenever he feels like it will voluntarily use his tapes far more often and effectively than a student who has to attend a compulsory lab session.
8. Though it is unnecessary to have a distinguished high-salaried specialist in residence throughout the year, it is important that the student's work be professionally evaluated if he is to receive a meaningful grade for the course.
9. Outside evaluation by a nationally known specialist is essential not only in order to keep the program's academic standards above reproach, but also to allow the specialist to recommend exceptionally promising students for language and area center fellowships or for programs overseas.
10. Operating costs are such that once established, a sound self-instructional program breaks even with only two students in it.

Given these considerations, there is no real reason why any college in the country which has foreign students on its campus to serve as tutors cannot, if it wants to, offer several of the less commonly taught languages on a self-instructional basis, for full credit, to some of its abler and better motivated students. The concept has been tested repeatedly and found to work on campus after campus.

The steady spread of self-instructional language programs (SILP) since this writer first conceived the idea in 1963 is due in no small measure to generous and farsighted initial support from the Carnegie Corporation and from USOE's Institute for International Studies.

This support, totalling well over a quarter of a million dollars since 1963, was used as “seed money” to enable interested colleges in various parts of the country to discover for themselves that the concept is indeed a viable alternative to live instruction in the classroom. It also provided this writer, as coordinator and general consultant of this growing constituency, with funds to acquire and evaluate new course materials, experiment with new techniques, locate qualified examiners, prepare questionnaires, collect and disseminate needed information by phone, mail, and word of mouth, to organize conferences, and generally to assist directors in every phase of program administration. ²

Growth of the Program

In each of the past seven years the number of self-instructional language programs has steadily risen and so have student enrollments, despite the phasing out of initial support from the outside. In last year's report this writer noted, among other things, that although enrollments in some of the commonly taught languages like French, German, and Russian were definitely declining, the languages of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East were attracting more American students than ever before. He also presented the results of a program-wide poll which showed that students engaged in self-instructional language study have overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards the program and its effectiveness.

That faculty and administrators like it too is evidenced by the number of new languages that have been introduced in this manner, without any outside support whatever, at many of the colleges participating in our program and even at some which are not.

Recent Developments

Academic 1971–72, our final year of USOE support, has seen efforts both to refine the program further and to ensure a degree of continuity and coordination in the years that lie ahead.

(1) Orientation Film

To meet the need for a standard, simple way to orient both native tutors and students in their respective roles in the tutorial, Eleanor Jorden, the author of the widely used course entitled Beginning Japanese and also a veteran examiner in our program, filmed at Cornell with the aid of local technicians and staff members a 35 minute training movie (using Japanese as a model) called “Do's and Don'ts of the Drill Session.” This movie, which has just been produced with program funds, will be available without charge (other than postage and insurance) to members of our proposed National Association for Self-Instructional Language Programs (NASILP). Initially, copies are being deposited with four conveniently located programs that are invited to serve as distribution centers for all programs in their area: SUNY/Buffalo and C.W. Post College for the North East (where most of the programs are presently concentrated); Kent State University in Ohio (to serve the Middle Western area); and for the West Coast and the Rockies, Chico State College in California. Further copies will undoubtedly be needed as the association expands its membership.

(2) Revision of the Manual

This writer's basic manual ( Self-Instruction in non-Western Languages: A Manual for Directors ) prepared in 1965 for the USOE and since then revised under the sponsorship of the NCAIS, is being expanded to include among other things practical suggestions for students, contributed by some of our veteran examiners, which may also make it useful as a supplementary text.

(3) Proposed new Tariff for Examinations

Because enrollments can and sometimes do vary greatly from program to program in a given language (from as few as one student to as many as 75), and because considerable travel time may also be involved for either student or examiner, our previous formula for compensating the latter with a flat honorarium of $100 per day no longer seems adequate. For very small programs (say just one student, who can be examined in less than one hour) $100 is probably excessive, while for fifteen students it is clearly too little. On the other hand a flat fee of, say, $25 per student would be prohibitive for large programs but not enough to justify the examiner's time and trouble if only one or two students were involved. We have therefore worked out three compromise tariffs which we trust will satisfy all concerned:

(i) If examiner visits campus (with at least an hour's travel time each way): Out-of-pocket expenses, plus $100 minimum for up to 10 individual examinations of 30–60 minutes duration, plus another $10 for each additional examination. (Under this tariff 1–10 individual proficiency tests would earn the visiting examiner $100, 15 tests $150, and so on.)

Note : Programs located in the same general area may find it possible to save money (and the examiner considerable time and trouble) by arranging to have their students tested jointly in one location and sharing expenses.

(ii) If students do the traveling and are tested at the examiner's convenience on his own campus (thereby saving him both travel time and effort), $30 minimum for up to three individual proficiency tests, plus another $10 for each additional one.

(iii) For individual make-up tests via long distance telephone (a direct dial call put through from the director's own office at a prearranged time, as described in last year's report), we recommend a flat fee of $10 per student (Though the program would also have to pay for the call itself, there would of course be no travel involved for anyone. Instead, the examiner would agree to promptly mail off to the director a very brief written statement on each student's performance.)

(4) Proposed New Association (NASILP)

To ensure continued liaison and information services of the kind hitherto supported by outside funds, a USOE-supported conference was held in Buffalo in December 1972 for the purpose of forming the National Association for Self-Instructional Language Programs (NASILP), which will elect officers from among the official delegates attending and assess the modest institutional contributions needed to maintain a secretariat. This secretariat will be charged with performing the sort of services provided up until now by the program's originator, coordinator and general consultant, Peter Boyd-Bowman, whose well equipped Center for Critical Languages at SUNY/Buffalo would of course be willing to maintain these services if invited to do so.

(5) Program Evaluation by Examiners

To encourage member institutions to observe our guidelines and maintain the highest possible standards, certain experienced examiners will be commissioned by our program director, Ward Morehouse, president of the NCAIS, to visit at USOE expense all charter members of the Association in December and give their programs a professional evaluation while doubling as a free examiner in one of the languages being offered.

(Strengthening our organizational structure, standardizing procedures, and an overall evaluation of the program are all among the approved goals of our USOE grant.)

(6) Publicity

This year our program, though it has yet to be “discovered” by Time or Newsweek , enjoyed more publicity than ever before. The coordinator's annual report for 1970–71 was reprinted in large part in the March 1972 issue of the Modern Language Journal (pp. 163–7), while a report by Edwin Neville, director of the Chinese and Japanese program at Canisius College, was summarized in Quinto Lingo and resulted in a spate of inquiries from all over the U.S. We understand further from Richard Thompson at USOE that this November's issue of American Education will be featuring a detailed report on our program, prepared apparently by one of the USOE staff writers. Though we have not yet seen it, we hear that it is highly favorable.

(7) Workshop for Future Directors

In order to prepare for what promises to soon become a new occupation, that of administering self-instructional language programs, this writer has announced a new graduate course at SUNY/Buffalo (Critical Languages 602) entitled Self-Instructional Language Programs: A Workshop for Directors (4 credits). This semester-long workshop, to be offered this spring to a limited number of graduate students of Spanish, German, Linguistics, etc. from SUNY/Buffalo and elsewhere, is designed to train a cadre of young faculty members to go forth equipped to initiate and direct similar programs in any new languages(s) for which there may be a demand at their future institutions.

Economic Advantages of Self-Instruction

The Appendix to this report summarizes the replies given by our program directors to a questionnaire sent out from this office last April. The spectacular increase in language offerings, most of them funded entirely by the colleges themselves, is due not only to the repeatedly demonstrated ability of SILP students to hold their own with students from regular classroom courses, but also to very real economic advantages. To cite an example:

Here at SUNY/Buffalo's Center for Critical Languages all students now buy or share their own inexpensive cassette recorders, which not only frees students from dependence on the language lab schedule but relieves the Center of the burden of maintaining an inventory of costly and constantly depreciating equipment.

This semester, in Japanese alone, the Center currently has 20 students working with two tutors, at four different levels of the language, for a total of 14 small-group or individual tutorials a week. Actual operating costs per semester, for Japanese only, are as follows:

Even taking into consideration that this is a tax-supported institution with relatively low tuition (average: only $400 per semester), our Japanese program each semester actually earns the state more money in tuition (20 students × 4 semester credit hours × approx. $25 per credit hour = $2000) than it costs to operate, even with generous hidden costs included.

No language lab facilities are needed (other than a simple cassette and tape duplicator), no expensive dial-access systems, computer terminals or other hardware which, in terms of the net results achieved, may be luxuries that today's economy will no longer tolerate.

Applicability to all Foreign Languages

Several of our progressive and economy-minded institutions, noting how little it costs to mount and operate successful self-instructional programs in non -Western languages, are already exploring, very cautiously, the possibility of applying the same technique to some of the more commonly taught languages as well, thereby freeing their often reduced or understaffed language departments to devote more time to students at the higher levels. As general program consultant first for Carnegie (1966–70), then for USOE (1969–72), this writer has gained considerable experience as a troubleshooter allaying the apprehensions of his fellow language teachers, some of whom are apt at first to fear that any self-instruction, even at the elementary level, will eventually put them out of a job. For some of them perhaps it will, but only if they cannot adapt to changing conditions. It is an axiom that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. This writer firmly believes that self-instruction in foreign languages will prove to be such an idea. ³

The author is Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Coordinator and General Consultant for the National Programof Self-Instruction in the Critical Languages (see footnote 3).

NOTES

¹ A list of the Self-Instructional Language Programs operating at 41 institutions in 1971–72, giving name of director, enrollments in each language, and type of audio equipment used, can be obtained from the author or from ADFL.

² The financial side of the operation has been handled all along by the Center for International Programs and World Affairs, N.Y. State Education Dept., Albany, N.Y., whose director, Dr. Ward Morehouse, is now also president of the National Council of Associations for International Studies. The NCAIS has given strong promotional support to our program on a nation-wide basis.

³ The author welcomes inquiries by mail addressed to the Critical Language Program, SUNY Buffalo, 229 Crosby Hall, Buffalo, N.Y. 14214, or by telephone, (716) 831-2306.

APPENDIX

Self-instructional language program (1971–72). Languages ranked according to the number of institutions reporting 1971–72 enrollments:

Eleven other languages were each reported by one college only: Amharic, Danish, Erse, Indonesian, Korean, Norwegian Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Thai, Ukrainian and Yiddish.

By total enrollment, however, the languages ranked as follows:

Of 42 colleges that responded,

As for language enrollments on individual campuses, we found that:

In all, the 42 colleges reported 1024 students enrolled in 113 individual language programs, all of them self-instructional, for an average of nearly three programs per college.

Further statistics on our 1971–72 SILP offerings.

© 1973 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 04, no. 3 (March 1973): 50-56

---

Table of Contents

Previous Article Next Article

No Works Cited