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SEVERAL years ago the editors of the ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series commissioned me to prepare an essay for their fourth volume, Foreign Language Education: A Reappraisal. My title was “Purposes and Goals in Foreign Language Education: A Look to the Future.” 1 Now I have agreed to disinter that 1972 essay, to hold it up to public scrutiny, and to determine whether the dust that has settled on my crystal ball has obscured both my vision and my foresight. Such is the luxury of hindsight!
Foreign language study in the schools is indeed at a crossroads and in a period of crisis, but my diagnostic sense suggests to me that the enterprise suffers most acutely from a crisis of confidence. In the course of my remarks I shall return often to this most disturbing theme.
The “survivors” of the audiolingual hegemony and its subsequent decline and fall from grace are acutely aware of the impermanence of methodological and electromechanical innovations. Witness the almost total absence of articles on the subject of FLES and—save in the pages of the Journal of the NALLD —the language laboratory. In the early to mid-sixties, I recall, there were few articles, if any, that tried to project into the future and describe the state of foreign language teaching during the final quarter of the century. On reflection, the reason for the dearth of such articles in this period is obvious: it was believed, admittedly rather naively, that the then present state of the art was, in effect, the future state of the art.
In my 1972 essay (p. 1) I characterized the decade of the 1970s as a time of transition during which the profession would seek to define and explore new directions and to find a new identity for the teaching of foreign languages in the total context of American education. It seems to me that we have made little substantive progress toward the latter objective. The identification and exploration of new directions continue to fill the pages of our journals and to provide grist for our graduate theses and dissertations, but this period of transition threatens not only to spill over into the 1980s but to characterize our efforts for the foreseeable future. It is unlikely that the final quarter of the twentieth century will produce any methodological breakthrough or quantum leaps in the teaching of foreign languages.
The most important statements on the individualization of instruction in foreign languages were published in 1971 and 1972. 2 It is not surprising, therefore, that the index to the 1972 volume in the ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series should list over three dozen entries under the rubric of “individualized instruction,” even though none of the titles of the thirteen review essays in Volume 4 specifically mentions individualized instruction, learning activity packets (LAPs), or contracts. The index to Volume 9 of the series, 3 which likewise contains no article on individualization per se, lists a grand total of two entries on individualized instruction. The figure represents one more entry than appears under the heading “audiolingualism.” The index to Volume 10 of the ACTFL series contains three entries on individualization. 4 I am certain that one should not infer from these data that individualized instruction will soon suffer the fate of audiolingualism and that this sharply reduced number of entries necessarily reflects the current level of individualization activity in the schools. We can conclude, however, although not solely on the basis of these data, that the rapid growth of individualized classrooms predicted in the early 1970s has not occurred and probably will not.
It is no easy matter to isolate the causes for the apparent downturn in individualization fever, but possible contributing factors are the back-to-basics syndrome, the public's disenchantment with and rejection of anything associated with the “open classroom,” the teachers' careful reading of the caveats and pitfalls involved in individualized instruction, and the teachers' sobering appreciation of the voluminous amount of paper that must be shuffled in a successful group. Contrary to what I had predicted earlier, it does not appear that interest in individualized instruction will grow and intensify in the near future, Most of my remarks on individualized instruction apply with equal vigor to the ancillary activities of contracts, LAPs, excessively detailed taxonomies of objectives, mastery, and self-pacing.
In my earlier essay I had observed that arbitrary academic restrictions on admission to language classes were rapidly disappearing and that the rate of elimination was certain to accelerate. I cited Disick, who wrote that “screening out low-aptitude students can no longer remain the foreign language teacher's privilege. Instead, finding ways of teaching both rapid and slow language learners must be his new challenge.” 5 It is no longer fashionable—indeed it may be heretical—to say that there are foreign language pupils and non-foreign language pupils. Yet it is not enough simply to make pronouncements about the present accessibility of language study to all pupils. These pronouncements must be accompanied by the introduction of curricular options that pupils will find both profitable and enjoyable. What concerns me most about these pronouncements is that they often mask business-as-usual practices in the classroom. If we sincerely and genuinely believe that every pupil—given sufficient time—can derive pleasure and profit from language study, then it behooves us to redesign our basic course and provide that necessary time. To do any less is simply to pay lip service to the democratization of foreign language study.
At the outset I alluded to a crisis of confidence in the foreign language teaching profession. I maintain that we have failed to convince the public that we have shed the cloak of elitism. I recently served as a consultant to a suburban Long Island community that was interested in developing an extracurricular, presecondary language program. I developed a comprehensive program, called Exploring Language and Culture , designed to overcome ethnocentrism and to introduce young learners to the nature of language and language learning. While the response to the program was generally favorable, the school officials made it clear that what the community wanted was a conventional FLES program, organized along elitist lines, which would introduce gifted elementary school pupils to the mysteries of French and Spanish. I argued—persuasively, I thought—that their junior high school, like most others in the country, would be neither prepared nor disposed to accommodate or track pupils with previous foreign language experience, especially since it receives students from other elementary schools that do not offer presecondary language; that the material these youngsters would be taught would be covered in a matter of weeks in grade 7; and that the research studies comparing the basic language skills of FLES and non-FLES pupils at various points in the sequence have failed to show the significant gains anticipated for pupils with presecondary experience. Here I was obviously not referring to such exemplary FLES programs as those designed in Hicksville, Long Island, and in Hackensack, New Jersey—though I understand that the years and the budget cutters have not spared these programs entirely.
I was completely unsuccessful in my efforts to demonstrate that the apparent logic and attractiveness of lengthening the language sequence were quite illusory and that the record is extremely disappointing in this regard. On the national level, sequences in excess of three academic years are exceptional. I did expose a nerve ending by my opposition to duplicating the beginning language course in grade 7. I insisted that since most Americans, especially business and professional people, “begin” language study two, three, or more times in an academic career or during continuing education (a disgraceful situation that reflects little credit on the language teaching profession, and inspires even less creditability), there is little to be gained by adding yet another “beginning.”
The message that the parents in this community were sending was unmistakable:
Now that enrollments are falling and budgets are failing, you language teachers have come around 180 degrees in your thinking and want to purge your discipline of the elitist wrapper it had when we were in school. Your cynicism is showing under your truth-in-advertising skirt, and your recent philosophical flip-flop has left us unconvinced. My kid has tested in the ninety-fifth percentile and I want him in a French class in grade 4—and with equally gifted kids.
The scenario could be continued, but I think the point is clear. This incident, certainly more than any before it, has illustrated to me the severity of the crisis of confidence that I alluded to earlier.
In accepting the chairmanship of the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, James A. Perkins conceded that one of the commission's most difficult tasks “would be to make a set of recommendations that would change public attitudes about the value of studying foreign languages.” 6 Preaching to the converted would accomplish nothing. “There is a very large public-education problem,” he added. “We are not riding on the crest of a forward wave; we're swimming upstream against the tide of parochialism.”
It is almost always instructive—although certainly rarely entertaining—to review trends in language enrollments. Earlier (“Purposes,” p. 13) I had written that classroom teachers, as a group, are not particularly sensitive to national or even state-wide enrollment data and that they rarely seem inclined or disposed to translate such data into teaching positions. Today, nothing could be farther from the truth. Militant unionism and school board intransigence have seen to that.
In New York State, the percentage of ninth- to twelfth-grade students studying a foreign language declined 3.2% in 1977–78 from the 1976–77 level, reaching a low of 33.6%. The figure had dropped precipitously from 48.1% in 1969 to 35.6% in 1973–74. Since then there have been no sharp declines, but registrations seem not to have “bottomed out” quite yet and continue to be a source of concern to the profession.
I am encouraged, on the one hand, by data showing that 30.3% of seventh-grade pupils and 29.4% of eighth-grade pupils are enrolled in language classes. l am dismayed, on the other hand, by an attrition rate of 40.8% after level 2 and of 74.1% after level 3. 7
The New York State percentage-of-population figures compare very favorably with national data reported by S. Frederick Starr, special consultant to the commission (see Scully, p. 10). In 1916, during the zenith of the elitist secondary school, 36% of all American high school students were studying a modem foreign language. Even if we exclude the 12,303 students studying Latin in 1977–78, the New York State figures are at least comparable to the pre-World War I data reported by Starr. The percentage of American high school pupils studying foreign languages in the mid-1970s—about 16%—was no greater than that in the 1890s. I would like to cite one final statistic from Starr: in 1957—the year of the first Soviet sputnik—a modest 20% of the national high school population was enrolled in language study. By 1965 the figure had risen only to 24%, and it has been declining steadily ever since. What this suggests is that the NDEA and the appropriation of millions of tax dollars succeeded in raising the percentage of the high school population enrolled in foreign language study a mere four percentage points. Granted, the 4% increase represented a great many pupils, sections, teachers, and textbooks, but it made little more than a crack in our national eggshell of parochialism.
There can be little doubt that American college campuses and, to a lesser extent, American high schools are in the grips of degree-requirement fever. It is difficult to conceive of an institution that is not taking, or has not recently taken, a close look at its entrance, divisional, and/or degree requirements.
In a recent survey of views on the foreign language requirement, Klayman found less than complete unanimity among language educators concerning the desirability of reinstating the requirement. 8 Those who opposed restoring it did so because they felt that a captive audience begets poor teaching and undelivered goals, which, in turn, create hostility among students. Although these educators are decidedly in the minority, their point of view is one that should be articulated and considered. A similar sentiment was expressed recently by the chairperson and faculty of a language department of a private college on Long Island. The degree requirement was dropped in 1969, and language registrations dipped to 50% of their former level. In the years since, the department has improved the quality of its courses and introduced or increased its offerings in the uncommonly taught languages. Enrollments have recovered and are now at their pre-1969 levels.
Most foreign language teachers, however, are bitterly critical of the removal of the foreign language degree requirement. They cite administrative cowardice in capitulating to student pressures and demonstrations, abandonment of liberal arts/general education requirements, and the depression of standards in general. Richard Brod, who has written and spoken widely on this subject, sums up the majority position as: “students are basically too young and too inexperienced to make judgments on the contents of a curriculum. That is what a faculty is paid to do. To neglect it is cowardice or dereliction of duty.” 9
Unquestionably, one of the most carefully watched developments in the area of high school diploma, college entrance, and degree requirements is the mandate recently imposed by the New York City Board of Education: a two-term (one-year) foreign language diploma requirement for New York City academic high schools. The institution of this requirement is optional for vocational high schools. 10 The measure, supported by the United Federation of Teachers, has been sent to the office of the chancellor of schools, where it awaits his review and the setting of an effective date for implementation. 11 The UFT has characterized the foreign language mandate as a victory for the city's students and teachers.
The implications of a high school foreign language diploma requirement are enormous, although we would be naive to assume that it will arrest and reverse a frankly deteriorating enrollment picture. The New York City Bureau of Foreign Languages and the language chairpersons have lobbied successfully for passage of this requirement, and I am informed that they are preparing teaching materials and courses of study to assist in its implementation.
Not only does this requirement offer a marvelous opportunity to New York City language teachers, it also carries with it an awesome responsibility to recover some of the veneer that has progressively been chipped away from the language teaching establishment. Our credibility, however, is more important than our prestige and our image, and I welcome this development as perhaps the most promising vehicle to combat the crisis of confidence that inflicts and infects the profession.
The fiscal crisis that descended on New York City in 1975 has tended to obscure the educational and political controversies surrounding bilingual-bicultural education. This may have been the only positive outcome of the city's financial difficulties. Even Albert Shanker has apparently been too busy elsewhere to continue his attacks on the threat of ethnic quotas in the city's teaching staff. The controversy surrounding the predominance of maintenance over transition programs seems likewise to have abated.
Shirley Brice Heath observes that even in regions of the country where ethnic identification does not seem to be a factor, that is, even where bilingual programs have not been established, interest in foreign languages is apparently increasing. 12 She insists that neither this interest nor response to the Bilingual Education Act will ensure that we can predict the future of either foreign language instruction or bilingual education in the United States. Dusel, cited by Heath, reports that many Americans view the passage of the Bilingual Education Act not as a revival of a lost linguistic and cultural tradition but rather as a temporary aberration.
Heath argues that in order for bilingual education to benefit foreign language teaching in this country, it must be an evangelical movement capable of engaging those who believe in language diversity and multilingualism. Should the monolingual tradition prevail, all foreign language teaching will suffer. Heath claims that the Bilingual Education Act was born out of humanistic traditions. I agree with that assessment, but it must be stated that opposition to certain bilingual education personnel practices uncovered in some of New York City's decentralized community school districts is not necessarily motivated by antihumanistic considerations. New York City Common Branch teachers who have been retrenched while federally funded bilingual education teachers have enjoyed immunity from retrenchment are understandably angry.
I would like to report briefly on a bilingual program that has recently been established in a multiracial English-speaking city, Cincinnati, and that has enormous potential for counteracting the bad press that many highly politicized bilingual programs have generated. 13 In my experience, the component of a bilingual-bicultural program that seems most often to be absent is the involvement of monolingual English-speaking pupils in the program. The failure to involve these children, and their parents, often results in alienation and antagonism toward the program. The Cincinnati public schools not only offer pupils in kindergarten and first grade the opportunity to learn a second language—which would constitute a conventional FLES program, albeit for very young learners—but also use the second language as a medium of instruction. The program is currently in its fourth year of operation, and an ever-increasing portion of the school's activities are being conducted in the second language. Standardized test data reveal that pupils in the program, who spend over one hour daily on second-language study, perform on a level comparable to nonparticipating Cincinnati youngsters. These results may reflect the particular population, inasmuch as the selection process is not fully described. No data are published on second-language achievement. It may be that a program of this type is a luxury that only a monolingual city could possibly afford to mount, but the pupils' and parents' responses to the experience seem gratifying, indeed.
I alluded above to a language teaching phenomenon that was quite popular immediately preceding the onset of audiolingualism: the exploratory language course. During the sixties, the exploratory language course fell victim to the four- and six-year sequences. It violated the principle then in effect that all linguistic experiences should be purposeful and sequential and that there was no place for dilettantism in language learning. In 1972 I observed that such courses, considered heretical a few short years earlier, had resurfaced—especially in middle and junior high schools, where the language program has been threatened.
The exploratory language course is indeed enjoying a revival in the schools, albeit in a wide variety of formats. And I might add, parenthetically, that the cyclical nature of exploratory language programs seems tied inextricably but inversely to the popularity of FLES programs. As FLES programs prosper, exploratory language programs wither. Today, of course, the reverse situation obtains.
At least five exploratory course configurations exist, the most popular of which, the language potpourri, comes immediately to mind. In this configuration, pupils study four languages, spending about ten weeks on each one. At the end of the school year, the pupils are ostensibly better prepared to make an intelligent decision about which language to study in high school. The second most popular exploratory format is the general language course. It is in this guise that the exploratory language course has been most successfully revived, although the scope and objectives have been broadened and deepened considerably. Common course titles are Language and Man, Language and Culture, and Exploring Language and Culture. The following is an abbreviated course description of Exploring Language and Culture:
…designed to treat the major symptoms of language learning failure and the inordinately high attrition rates…[aimed at] the development of an appreciation for the essence of language and the breaking down of cultural barriers and ethnocentric “hang-ups” which adversely color the attitudes of young people toward speakers of other languages.… Americans have traditionally suffered from acute ethnocentrism, a pathological distrust and dislike of anything foreign (unless, of course, it is handsomely packaged and similarly priced).… pupils [will learn] to understand, tolerate, and perhaps, to respect divergent patterns of behavior and modes of expression.… will be introduced to the concept of national character and will be encouraged to examine their own attitudes toward speakers of other languages.…
The Bureau of Foreign Language Education of the New York State Education Department recently announced a major curricular development in a publication entitled, significantly, Modern Languages for Everyone. 14 The new modern language curriculum guide focuses primarily on providing flexibility and accessibility while retaining students for longer than the traditional two years. The new curriculum allows a number of options, ranging from the four-skill sequence through special-interest programs to advanced courses. These options are intended to serve the widely diverse characteristics of the schools as well as the equally diverse needs of the students, especially in terms of aptitude and learning goals. The core of the new curriculum is a basic course, offered in each language taught in a given district. The basic course has diagnostic, instructional, and motivational objectives, but no specific length of time is mandated for its completion. A student who is considered ready to move on from the basic course may begin the four-skill sequence, the listening-speaking sequence, the reading-writing sequence, or the reading sequence. Each has equal curricular importance and validity, and the choice should depend on the aptitude and interest the student has demonstrated in the basic course. Completion of one of the four sequences is viewed as an intermediate experience in language learning, not as the final stage. Each of the sequences, as well as the basic course, is described in Modern Languages for Everyone. Persons interested in a more detailed exposition of the new curriculum guide—including information on the awarding of Regents and local credit and on the impact of the guide on the Regents Examination Program—should address inquiries to the Bureau of Foreign Languages Education of the New York State Education Department. Forthcoming publications will describe the advanced courses, the local credit courses, and the application of the new curriculum's principles to the individual modern foreign languages.
Interest in minicourses seems to have peaked and now appears to be waning. The suggestion that minicourses in English may have contributed to declining verbal SAT scores may account for the apparent decline in these offerings. Decreasing foreign language enrollments, incidentally, have also been suggested as a cause of the lower verbal SAT score. Another possible explanation for the falloff in minicourses is that language teachers have begun to suspect the intellectual integrity of some of the curricular options offered in this format.
An especially exciting phenomenon that we are reading and hearing about with greater frequency deals with communicative competence and oral communication testing. One of the most recent publications in this field is the Linder handbook, Oral Communication Testing. 15
The outlook from the crisis-crossroads juncture at which the language teaching profession finds itself is considerably more encouraging than it was five short years ago. Yet the source of this optimism is once again extrinsic to the efforts of the profession to examine, diagnose, monitor, and heal itself.
Twenty-three years ago, the launching of a Soviet sputnik precipitated a massive infusion of funds into the improvement of foreign language teaching. The profession responded with both enthusiasm and intelligence to an unprecedented display of federal largesse. But a number of circumstances—the Vietnam War, the decrease in the secondary school population, galloping inflation and the threat of recession, unrealistic expectations and undelivered promises, and the emergence of an unusually permissive society—all combined to take the wind out of our sails. We have been “in irons” ever since, unable to pick up the gentlest breeze or to generate any useful air of our own. For years we continued to preach to the converted and the committed. The gradual “swing-back” of foreign language entrance and exit requirements and the “bottoming out” of foreign language registrations are not, in my view, in any way directly attributable to our own efforts. Bilingual-bicultural education may ultimately benefit the teaching of foreign languages, as many have suggested, but I have seen no evidence of this.
In considering the recommendations of the President's Commission I am confident that the commission members and the members of the Congress and the Senate, whose views will ultimately prevail, cannot and will not fail to recognize the legitimate aspirations, needs, and values of the language teaching profession. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we are indebted in no small way to the misfortunes of an American interpreter who stood shivering for several hours in the cold and rain on the tarmac of a Warsaw airport. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 owed its passage to the launching of the Soviet sputnik in 1957. It is not unthinkable that Seymour's unfortunate errors in translation were more instrumental in attracting public attention to the national neglect of foreign languages than ten or more years of professional rhetoric had been.
The author is Professor of Romance Languages at Queens College, City University of New York. This paper was presented at the National Conference on New Directions in Foreign Language Studies and Language Policy, held at the William Paterson College of New Jersey, 17 November 1978. The editors are grateful to the chairman of the host department, Octavio de la Suaree, for granting permission to print this article.
1 Jerald R. Greene, “Purposes and Goals in Foreign Language Education: A Look to the Future,” in Foreign Language Education: A Reappraisal , ed. Dale L. Lange, ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series, Vol. 4 (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1972), pp. 1–33.
2 Howard B. Altman and Robert L. Politzer, Individualizing Foreign Language Instruction (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1971), and Ronald Gougher, ed., Individualization of Instruction in Foreign Languages: A Practical Guide (Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development, 1972).
3 June K. Phillips, ed., The Language Connection: From the Classroom to the World (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1977).
4 June K. Phillips, ed., Building on Experience—Building for Success (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1979).
5 Renée S. Disick, Performance Objectives in Foreign Language Teaching , MLA-ERIC Focus Report 25 (New York: MLA-ERIC, 1971).
6 Malcolm G. Scully, “Push Early Study of Foreign Languages, Panel Is Urged,” Chronicle of Higher Education , 6 Nov. 1978, p. 10.
7 Bureau of Foreign Languages Education, Foreign Language Enrollments in the Public Schools of New York State (Albany: State Education Department, 1978).
8 Norma Enea Klayman, “Views on the Foreign Language Requirement in Higher Education,” Modern Language Journal , 62 (1978), 235–38.
9 Quoted by John Hildebrand in “From Relevance to Requirements,” Newsday , 5 Oct. 1978, p. 5A.
10 UFT Bulletin/New York Teacher , 17 Aug. 1980, p. 3A.
11 Personal communication from David Weiss, Head, Foreign Languages Unit, Division of Curriculum and Instruction, New York City Board of Education, 16 Oct. 1980.
12 Heath, “Our Language Heritage,” in The Language Connection: From the Classroom to the World , ed. June K. Phillips, ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series, Vol. 9 (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1977), pp. 23–51.
13 Myriam Met, “Bilingual Education for Speakers of English,” Foreign Language Annals , 11 (1978), 35–40.
14 Bureau of General Education Curriculum Development, Modern Languages for Everyone (Albany: New York State Education Department, 1978).
15 Cathy Linder, Oral Communication Testing (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1977).
© 1980 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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