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IN WRITING on strategies and methods in individualized language instruction in 1975, Renée Disick emphatically stated: “just as the 1960's witnessed the audio-lingual era, so the 1970's appear to be the decade of individualized instruction.” 1 Clearly, the first major professional recognition of individualized instruction in foreign languages came with the publication, in 1970, of Individualization of Instruction , the second volume of the ACTFL Review of Foreign Language Education. Although Lorraine Strasheim's lead article meandered in sketching a rationale for individualization and personalization, it was nonetheless devastatingly direct and succinct in describing conventional foreign language instruction:
…students have been called upon “to sit and listen to the teacher” and are “required to remember ” [; they are taught] “in single formation, by one person facing and haranguing 25 to 30 younger persons who are lined up like a glee club.” The result is what Goodman terms an “inflexible lock-step.” The student never takes notes or listens very carefully to the recitation of his peers. 2
The pejorative phrase “inflexible lockstep” has become a revolutionary banner unfurled with some success by most proponents of individualized instruction, and for me the term conjures up a mixed image: the Third Reich's angry goosestepping marchers and the depersonalized numbered citizens of Zamyatin's dystopian Single State, trudging in even ranks, four abreast, in time to the music. 3 What individualizers find especially disturbing about the “inflexible lockstep” and the “teacher-centered class” is “that there is some defined corpus of basic and static facts which must be mastered before the student is ready for activities which are personally interesting and meaningful” (Strasheim, p. 15). According to Strasheim, “the best rationale for the individualization or personalization of all instruction lies in the demands for recognition of individual worth being made by all the various segments of society,” which means that every learning experience should further the students' search for self-identity, self-orientation, and self-direction (p. 18). The relevance of this philosophy to the college elementary language classroom would appear to me questionable, and the elementary Russian language instructor may well be perplexed in wondering how to promote a personally interesting and meaningful experience in Russian for the students before they have been introduced to the phonetic system, Cyrillic script, case endings, going verbs, and the distinction between perfective and imperfective verbs—all of which are indispensable to the most rudimentary communication in Russian. We should note that the overwhelming mass of literature on individualized instruction, especially theoretical literature, has come from educators concerned with primary and secondary education and that the individualized approach has only relatively recently found adherents at the college level.
Using elementary Russian as a specific referent, I would like to address the question of individualized, self-paced language instruction as an alternative to the traditional classroom method. I write as a traditionalist of the 1950s inoculated with a tough strain of audiolingualism in the early 1960s and as an administrator who in 1974 encouraged and facilitated the introduction of individualized instruction in Russian (called Program I) at the State University of New York, Albany. I would like first to sketch a brief working definition of individualized instruction, then to present the underlying philosophy and characteristics of Program I (the “I” originally stood for “innovation”) and compare them briefly to other existing individualized instruction programs in Russian, and finally to examine—from the perspective of the student, the instructor, and the administrator—the ramifications of conducting, concurrently, individualized and traditional programs of instruction in Russian.
What is meant by individualized instruction? First, let me emphasize that individualized instruction is not “self-instruction.” I mention this because the National Program of Self-Instruction in the Critical Languages may be the key to the continued teaching of Slavic languages other than Russian at most colleges and universities. During the coming decade of constrained finances and dwindling enrollments, self-instruction may become the sole means for many small colleges—like Skidmore, for example—to offer instruction in Russian? 4
Individualized instruction offers choices in four major areas of teaching and learning: objectives, rate, method, and content. Some popular terms representing the choices in these areas are “independent study” (objectives), “flexible” or “self-paced” (rate), “multimedia” (style or method), and “minicourses” (content). 5 In his report on the First National Conference on Individualized Instruction in Foreign Languages, held in Columbus, Ohio, in May 1979, Leon Twarog has also used the terms “mastery-based” and “variable-credit” in defining individualized instruction in the TAMBSPI project at Ohio State University; 6 but a mastery-based objective has been set at eighty percent, offering no choice to the student, while a variable-credit approach to the material covered involves the division of a single five-credit course into five one-credit mini-courses.
Program I, a nonlockstep, contract-graded instructional system operating out of a learning center, was established in fall 1974 at Albany by Rodney Patterson, who had developed and implemented its prototype at the University of California, Davis, two years earlier with the aid of a modest Innovative Projects in Instruction grant. Although Patterson did not use the term “individualized instruction” in the original program description, his stated objectives reflect the basic spirit of that concept:
My primary objective was to improve undergraduate instruction in Russian by (1) exploring innovational concepts of instruction in the hope of reversing the trend toward dwindling enrollments in Russian at UCD; (2) finding ways to counter the impression among students that the study of Russian involves great academic risks; (3) effecting a curricular flexibility and conceptual modernity that would draw students from various academic levels and areas of interest; (4) finding better ways of serving both the highly gifted and the ungifted student of foreign languages; (5) encouraging greater faculty collaboration in the creation of modern audiovisual supplementary learning materials; (6) providing students with greater one-to-one contact with their teachers; and (7) challenging students to involve themselves more responsibly and creatively in the learning process. 7
As Program I completes its seventh year at Albany, we can say with some confidence and pride that it has indeed become an integral part of the department's Russian language program.
The elementary Russian sequence at Albany, in both the traditional and the individualized tracks, is currently divided into four consecutive segments numbered Russian 101–04 for a total of ten semester credit hours: Russian 101 covers units 1 to 8 of Stilman, Stilman, and Harkins' Introductory Russian Grammar ; 8 Russian 102 covers units 9–13; Russian 103, units 14–18; and Russian 104, units 19–23. The traditional track meets five times weekly for fifty-five minutes per class for each seven-week course and has, in addition, at least one laboratory session per week for the first semester. In the second semester the laboratory is replaced by weekly fifty-five-minute conversation sections with no more than four students in each. Grading is based on unit tests that consist of dictation, morphological exercises, and written translations from English into Russian. The individualized-track program stipulates at least one meeting per week in the Russian Room; laboratory tapes are available, but listening to them is not required; and students must pass each unit at the contracted level (92%, A; 84%, B; 76%, C) before they go on to the next unit. Students are permitted a maximum of five attempts (each test is different) to pass each unit; should they fail to pass in five attempts, we negotiate the contract downward by one grade. Graduate assistants staff the individualized-track program thirty-six hours per week, while a faculty member and a graduate assistant team-teach each traditional class, the faculty member conducting three sessions per week and the assistant two. The traditional course commences once each year (in September), but students may begin studying Russian on the individualized track on any day of the academic year, taking up to a semester and a half to complete each of the four seven-week segments.
If we recall the four areas of choice posed by Disick, we can see that Program I provides the student with some choice of content (four modules of eight, five, five, and five units each), wide choice in rate (from three to twenty-three weeks to complete each module), a limited choice of objectives (written performance is required, but audiolingual competence is optional, carrying no additional credit), and only a limited choice of medium or style (textbook and/or listening tapes; one-on-one instruction, which may or may not include oral practice; and self-study).
How does Program I compare with five other individualized instruction programs in Russian with which I am familiar? One, a computer-based individualized two-year Russian program developed by Joseph Van Campen at Stanford University, had replaced traditional classroom sections in 1970 but apparently proved too expensive for widespread use. The second, a self-instructional Russian audiolingual program based on Dawson, Bidwell, and Humesky's Modern Russian , has been introduced by William McBain as one of several experimental pilot programs in foreign languages at the University of Maryland. The program, however, is not individualized in the sense that a student has any choice in objectives, pace, medium, or goals; rather, it is a self-study audiolingual program with flexibly scheduled lockstep drill sessions by paid native proctors, with the grade and number of credits based on a single final oral examination. Although the program is an alternative to the traditional classroom at Maryland, it is neither staffed by the Russian faculty nor integrated with the traditional Russian sequence.
The remaining three programs are similar to Program I in that they create a self-paced track parallel to an existent traditional elementary Russian course: the Ohio State program is based on Russian for Everybody and Robert Baker's accompanying workbook; the University of California, Berkeley, program and Program I are based on Stilman, Stilman, and Harkins; and the Program I prototype of the University of California, Davis, is based on Ben T. Clark's Russian for Americans . 9 Of these, Program I offers the most flexibility in pacing: its students register for a fixed-content module that they may complete in three to twenty-three weeks; students in the Berkeley and Ohio State programs register for a fixed period of one quarter with a variable content adjusted downward from a maximum of five credits, depending on the students' pace. Both Program I and Berkeley make optional the audiolingual portion required in the traditional classroom, while Ohio State maintains the audiolingual portion unless it is replaced (after the first quarter) by a reading variant with supplementary materials. Program l, apparently, is the only one of these individualized-instruction programs to offer contract grading that enables the student to select and strive for a specified level of proficiency and academic grade.
Undoubtedly there have been numerous other, less publicized attempts at individualizing Russian instruction. We should note, for example, that individual attention (although not completely individualized instruction) was one of the four basic themes that ran through some recently cited success stories for increasing Slavic program enrollments. 10 Without a doubt the individualization of instruction is one of several significant changes that have been implemented in high school language classes during the past decade, and we should ask, as did David Wolfe in a 1978 summary article, why individualized instruction, new textbooks, the concept of communicative competence, testing for mastery, and the teaching of culture have been so slow in affecting college teaching. 11
Now let us examine more closely my assertion that Program I was successfully integrated into the Russian program at Albany. In considering, adopting, adapting, or developing any type of individualized program or alternative track, the specific institution should be taken into account. What may work for Ohio State University, with an undergraduate population of forty thousand, a graduate Slavic program with readily available graduate assistants, and a four-quarter foreign language requirement may not be at all applicable to a small liberal arts college with a Russian major staffed by one person. The State University of New York, Albany, falls somewhere in between: there are, happily, ten thousand undergraduates and, unhappily, no foreign language requirement, and no breadth or distribution requirements. Let us take registration in fall 1980 to illustrate the symbiotic relationship that has developed between our two Russian tracks. By the fourteenth day of classes, the two elementary Russian sections boasted an enrollment of thirty-eight, while Program I had ten beginning students, plus six continuing students who were studying second-semester Russian. If we assume that the students registered in Program I could not or would not have registered in the traditional sections, then we can conclude that the existence of the individualized track had increased enrollments by approximately forty percent. During the remainder of the semester, nine students shifted from the traditional sections to Program I, primarily because they were unable to, or chose not to, maintain the “lockstep” pace. Had Program I and the transfer option not existed, these students might have dropped Russian, thereby increasing our rate of attrition. If we consider that six new students began Program I during the semester, we see that during one semester the enrollment ratio between the two traditional sections and Program I had gone from 38:16 to 25:31. Staffing resources allocated to these two tracks were 0.5 FTE for Program I (the equivalent of two graduate assistants) and 1.17 FTE for the two traditional sections (two thirds of one faculty member, plus one graduate assistant). From the administrator's perspective, Program I has helped maintain a steady enrollment of approximately fifty-five students throughout the semester at less than half the cost of the two traditional sections. In addition, to staff Program I we assign four or five hours' duty each week in the Russian Room to all graduate students not assigned to classroom team teaching. (All graduate students take a required methodology course that meets once a week throughout the academic year and, among other things, conducts a systematic review of the entire first-year grammar text.) In other words, Program I serves as an instructional laboratory for all graduate students, enhancing their Russian proficiency and instructional capability. For some it provides the training and confidence needed for success in a traditional classroom situation. We also use the Russian Room to provide an internship experience for qualified advanced undergraduates on an elective basis.
For the students, Program I offers (1) a choice each September between the traditional lockstep and self-paced, mastery-based, one-on-one instruction; (2) a unique opportunity to begin the study of Russian anytime during the academic year; (3) the chance to transfer from the traditional program to the individualized track at any time; (4) a Russian Room, staffed thirty-six hours per week, where traditional-track students can obtain tutoring in problem areas or conduct systematic reviews by taking Program I tests for past units; and (5) a fail-safe option permitting any student to take more time to complete a specific Russian course at a higher level of mastery.
For the elementary Russian' instructor, Program I provides an unusual opportunity to alter and individualize the traditional classroom in the course of the year. During the first semester, we direct students with problems to Program I's Russian Room for specifically assigned corrective exercises and, if they continue to falter in the classroom, we offer them the option of transferring to Program I. By the beginning of the second semester, almost all students performing below the B level have dropped, or transferred from, the traditional track; this year, for example, we are left with two sections of eight students each. Participation time for each student increases dramatically; audiolingual performance can be emphasized because explanations of grammar are reduced to spot corrections (usually by practical example in Russian rather than by cerebral explanation in English); class time can be individualized when necessary (for example, half the class can be writing exercises at the chalkboard while the rest practice conversation); each unit is covered more quickly and easily, thereby leaving time to introduce supplementary materials (songs, children's literature); and conversation groups limited to four students each replace the obligatory weekly laboratory session. Students must listen to one another recite, because they will be asked to repeat, paraphrase, correct, or embellish what another member of the group has just read or said. The traditional second-semester elementary Russian classroom at Albany is most certainly not self-paced, but it is replete with individual attention: each student interacts in small groups with a senior faculty member in three or four classes each week and with a graduate assistant in two or three classes each week. Most of the second-semester students do not shift to Program I, because they know that they would not push themselves as hard and would not accomplish as much, for students have cited procrastination, insufficient self-discipline, and an inability to sustain motivation and effort as the major problems in all individualized-instruction programs ( Proceedings , pp. 7, 65–66, 132–33, 142; Twarog and Walters, p. 20).
If the 1960s indeed were the audiolingual era and the 1970s the decade of individualized instruction, what will the 1980s bring? Individualized instruction in foreign languages—that is, “allowing the student to work at his own pace of learning, to take tests or quizzes when ready, and to be given at least two chances to take a quiz or a test” (Wolfe, p. 20)—will not and should not replace the existing traditional classroom. In many institutions, however, individualized instruction will not only provide a viable alternative to traditional programs but will enhance them. The audiolingual era enriched the traditional classroom with its legacy of language as communication and its understanding of culture in the anthropological sense, as a way of life comprising all learned and shared habits that characterize a societal group, rather than solely as a civilization's intellectual and artistic endeavors. Similarly, the individualization of the 1970s has left a legacy that can improve and enhance traditional instruction: a continued stress on communicative competence and testing for mastery; a clear definition of performance objectives and the creation of materials aimed at these objectives; the introduction of individual attention and student-centered activities—and, where possible or practical, of individualized or alternative instructional tracks—into what may have been exclusively teacher-centered classrooms. Should we succeed in improving elementary instruction in foreign languages in American colleges, the 1980s will he remembered, not grimly as the “decade of declining enrollments,” but favorably as the “era of creative eclecticism.”
Alex M. Shane is Professor of Russian at the State University of New York, Albany. This paper was delivered at the Fifth Annual Seminar on Foreign Area Studies at Columbia University on 27 February 1981 and will also appear in a forthcoming volume of seminar proceedings to be published by the Council on National Literatures.
1 Renée S. Disick, Individualizing Language Instruction: Strategies and Methods (New York: Harcourt, 1975), p. 4.
2 Lorraine A. Strasheim, “A Rationale for the Individualization and Personalization of Foreign Instruction,” in Individualization of Instruction , ACTFL Review of Foreign Language Education series, ed. Dale L. Lange, Vol. 2 (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1973), p. 15.
3 Yevgeny Zamyatin, We , trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York: Viking, 1972), pp. 6–7.
4 See Peter Boyd-Bowman, “National Program of Self-Instruction in the Critical Languages: Final Report 1971–1972,” ADFL Bulletin , 4, No. 3 (March 1973), 50–53; Sonja Karsen, “The Less Commonly Taught Languages: Their Relevance to Our Shrinking World,” ADFL Bulletin , 9, No. 3 (March 1978), 44–46.
5 Disick, p. 5. Also see Howard B. Altman, “Individualized Foreign Language Instruction: What Does It Mean?” Foreign Language Annals , 4 (May 1971), 421–22, an article that marked the beginning of a special section in FLA devoted to individualized instruction.
6 Leon I. Twarog, “Overview and Background,” Proceedings of the First National Conference on Individualized Instruction in Foreign Languages , ed. Elizabeth P. Isaac and Leon I. Twarog (Columbus: Coll. of Humanities, Ohio State Univ., 1979), p. 5.
7 Rodney L. Patterson, “The Russian Room: An Individualized Approach to Teaching College Russian,” ADFL Bulletin , 6, No. 2 (Nov. 1974), 41. For a description of Program I at SUNY Albany, see Proceedings , pp. 141–48, and Rodney L. Patterson, “Program I: Russian,” Options for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures , comp. Warren C. Born and Kathryn Buck (New York: ACTFL, 1978), pp. 134–37.
8 Galina Stilman, Leon Stilman, and William E. Harkins, Introductory Russian Grammar , 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1972).
9 E. Stepanova, Z. Ievleva, and L. Trushina, Russkij jazyk dlja vsex (Russian for Everybody) , ed. V. Kostomarov, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Russian Lang. Publishing House, 1976), and Robert L. Baker, Mastering Russian: A Workbook for Use with Russian for Everybody, 2nd ed. (Laconia, N.H.: Paquette Associates, 1976). For a summary discussion of the Ohio State individualized instruction programs (TAMBSPI), including the Russian program, see Proceedings and Leon I. Twarog and E. Garrison Walters, “Mastery-Based, Self-Paced Instruction in Foreign Languages at Ohio State University: A Report to the Profession on a Four Year Experiment in Individualized Instruction in Six Foreign Languages,” Modern Language Journal , 65 (1981), 1–23; Ben T. Clark, Russian for Americans (New York: Harper, 1967).
10 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages of the U.S., Techniques for Increasing Slavic Program Enrollments: A Collection of Success Stories , ed. Donald K. Jarvis (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 1978). Also see Donald K. Jarvis' summary “Techniques for Increasing Slavic Program Enrollments,” ADFL Bulletin , 10, No. 2 (Nov. 1978), 32–34.
11 David E. Wolfe, “Recent Developments in Second Language Teaching,” ADFL Bulletin , 9, No. 3 (March 1978), 20–23.
© 1981 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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