|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A RECENT issue of On Campus, a monthly supplement to Newsweek that carries news features of interest to college students, included an article on the problems inherent in the use of foreign-born teaching assistants in American colleges and universities. Because so many of the top American graduates are siphoned away by high-paying, high-prestige jobs in industry and business, more and more departments of math, science, and engineering are relying on foreign TAs to teach their lower-level classes. The article asserted that no matter how expert these TAs are in their subjects, American students often feel shortchanged when they have to work at understanding both the course and the teacher's accent. Some TAs speak in broken English; some barely speak English at all. Other complaints can be traced to a conflict of cultures. American students expect to be able to question the teacher and to disagree. In many other countries the professor is the absolute master of his or her classroom, accustomed to discoursing without interruption or challenge (Schwartz).
Although the article concentrated on foreign TAs in such areas as math and science, it said nothing of the difficulties that emerge with the use of these TAs in foreign language classes. But we too encounter problems arising from cultural conflicts and poor spoken English.
Ideally we would like our first-year classes to be taught exclusively in the target language. Nevertheless, we know that some English is required, at least when it comes to explaining certain grammatical subtleties of the language. This is where problems emerge. Although the foreign teaching assistants have made an adequate enough score on the TOEFL to be granted assistantships, they often cannot easily make themselves understood to their students, many of whom have extreme difficulty dealing with any type of foreign accent.
Departments often assign all incoming teaching assistants, native and nonnative, to first-year language classes. This practice simplifies the life of the TA supervisor, since he or she usually teaches a methods course or a first-year demonstration course during the new TA's first semester. It is much easier to keep track of first-year teaching assistants if they are all teaching the same course Although the practice has its merits and enables native TAs to learn to teach the finer points of grammar, it often causes students to lose interest in the language during that crucial first encounter. Many native teaching assistants do not know the grammatical rules that underlie the subtleties of their native language. Students become frustrated and have a legitimate reason to complain about the quality of the instruction they are receiving. Because of these problems, we try to avoid assigning a native teaching assistant to teach a first-year course This paper focuses primarily on the changes we have effected to make better use of our Latin American teaching assistants.
Before discussing these changes, I want to give a bit of background information. Our required-course sequence at the University of Virginia, like that of most other colleges and universities, comprises a series of courses taken over two years. The first-year program consists of the one-semester courses Spanish 101 and 102, which cover the material in a typical first-year grammar text. In addition, there are two courses that cover the material in a first-year text in one semester: Spanish 105, for students with one or two years of high school Spanish and scores on the CEEB of below 500; and Spanish 106, for students with three or more years of high school Spanish and, again, scores below 500 on the CEEB. We separate these two groups because the students with three or more years of study usually do not need as much review of basic grammar as students with fewer years do. Also, as an added incentive, students in Spanish 106 who receive a grade of A or B can proceed directly to the last course of the required sequence.
The second-year program consists of Spanish 201, a somewhat traditional intermediate grammar review, and Spanish 202. It is in the 202 course that we have made curricular changes in order to use our native teaching assistants to better advantage. The course is now divided into two tracks, A and B. Both tracks continue the grammar review began in Spanish 201; however, 202A focuses on literature, while 202B emphasizes Latin American culture and civilization. Most students take Spanish 202 solely because it is required. By giving students a choice between literature and culture, the department is trying to accommodate their wide range of interests and make this last course in the sequence more appealing to them. By creating the culture course, we make more efficient use of our native teaching assistants.
In recent years many advances have been made in the teaching of culture. Genelle Morain, for example, discusses the evolution of such techniques as the culture capsule, the culture cluster, the minidrama, the cultural assimilator, the micrologue, the cultoon, and the audiomotor unit. As these techniques for how to teach culture developed, the question of what to teach also had to be addressed. One of the most significant advances in this area is the “emergent model” developed by Howard Nostrand, in which culture is divided into main themes. A theme, according to Nostrand, is “an emotionally charged concern, which motivates or strongly influences the culture bearer's conduct in a wide variety of situations” (277).
Development of this model led to the identification of goals involved in the teaching of culture. In the early seventies, Frances and Howard Nostrand described nine “kinds of understanding” to be tested. Subsequently, Ned Seelye refined the Nostrands' objectives to seven specific goals (28–31). Further developing this perspective, Robert Lafayette outlined twelve goals, which dealt with a range of changes, from cognitive to affective. The first five goals involve recognizing and/or interpreting certain aspects of the target country: (1) major geographical features; (2) major historical events; (3) major aesthetic monuments, including architecture, literature, and the arts; (4) “active” everyday cultural patterns, such as eating and shopping; and (5) “passive” cultural patterns, such as marriage customs and education. The remaining goals involve learning (6) to act appropriately in everyday situations; (7) to use appropriate common gestures; (8) to evaluate the validity of generalizations about foreign cultures; (9) to develop skills needed to locate and organize information about culture; (10) to value different peoples and societies; (11) to recognize and/or interpret the culture of foreign language-related ethnic groups in the United States; and (12) to recognize and/or interpret the culture of additional countries that speak the foreign language (35–42).
We have attempted to incorporate as many of Lafayette's goals as possible into our 202B course. Obviously it has been easier to include and test the cognitive component—material on such subjects as geography, historical events, and aesthetic monuments. More difficult to teach and test are those intangible, affective components such as the ability to value different peoples and societies and act appropriately in everyday settings.
Among the thirty teaching assistants in our department in 1985–86, eleven were native speakers, born and educated in a Spanish-speaking country. Eight were from Latin America and three were from Spain. We have found the Latin Americans to be naturals for the 202B course. As the last course in the sequence, it is conducted exclusively in Spanish, which is clearly no problem for these teaching assistants. Further, since most of the basic grammar has been covered in the previous semesters, they do not have to concern themselves with the precise rule that underlies some grammatical subtlety. They can thus concentrate their energies on something with which they are quite familiar—the culture and civilization of Latin America.
This is not to say that our native Latin American teaching assistants never teach grammar courses. An important part of their graduate training involves learning how to explain the various grammatical rules to English-speaking students. But we prefer this training to take place after the first year of graduate school. As in most language departments, our TAs go through a preservice orientation workshop, during which time they must also find an apartment, deal with utility companies, and master our public transportation systems. By assigning them to teach Spanish 202B in their first year, we give them more time to adjust not only to life in this country but, perhaps more important, to the idiosyncracies of the American classroom and student. Once they are acclimated to an American milieu, they are better able to deal with the problems encountered in teaching lower-level grammar courses.
Spanish 202B has been so popular that plans are now under way to add another track, which would focus on the culture and civilization of Spain. It would allow us to use the teaching assistants from Spain more efficiently and to respond to the Spanish 202A course evaluations that have suggested a peninsular parallel to the Latin American course. Since 202A focuses primarily on literature, the students often complain that they are not learning as much as their peers in the culture course. Somehow, for 202B students, learning geographic as well as historical, social, economic, and other cultural facts seems to mean they are learning more vis-à-vis the literature students.
Spanish 202B may be the only opportunity many students have to interact with a “real” Latin American. Having native Latin American teachers can also help to combat stereotypes and erase mistaken notions that American students have about Hispanics. In all, we have found that the course offers a range of benefits, and I hope that the description provided here may prove useful to other foreign language departments that have high concentrations of native teaching assistants.
The author is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. This article is based on a paper presented at the MLA convention, 27–30 December 1985, in Chicago.
Lafayette, Robert C. Teaching Culture: Strategies and Techniques. Arlington: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1978.
Morain, Genelle. “Commitment to the Teaching of Foreign Cultures.” Modern Language Journal 67 (1983): 403–12.
Nostrand, Frances, and Howard L. Nostrand. “Testing Understanding of the Foreign Culture.” Perspectives for Teachers of Latin American Culture. Ed. H. Ned Seelye. Springfield: Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1970. 161–70.
Nostrand, Howard L. “Empathy for a Second Culture: Motivations and Techniques.” Responding to New Realities. Ed. Gilbert A. Jarvis. Skokie: Natl. Textbook, 1974. 263–327.
Schwartz, John, et al. “Let's Talk It Over.” Newsweek on Campus Dec. 1985: 43–44.
Seelye, H. Ned. Teaching Culture: Strategies for Foreign Language Educators. Skokie: Natl. Textbook, 1974.
© 1987 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
