|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THIS paper describes how a substantive change in a major university's language requirement—a change from a seat-time to a proficiency-based requirement—affected the second-language programs in general and our roles as directors of language instruction in particular. The first section explains the change and the way it has been implemented; the second discusses our major concerns and problems under the old requirement; and the third analyzes the effects of the new requirement.
The University of Minnesota, with its five campuses and over 70,000 students (including 17,500 in its continuing-education and extension program) is both a state land-grant university and a major research institution. The Twin Cities Campus, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, is the largest, with over 41,000 students in nineteen colleges. The largest of these is the College of Liberal Arts; serving as a point of entry for students planning to attend many of the other, more specialized colleges, it has an enrollment of almost 16,000.
The College of Liberal Arts offers instruction in over thirty modern languages, including languages as diverse as Dutch, Hebrew, Finnish, Dakota, and Ojibwe. The largest program is in Spanish, which in 1989–90 offered 71 sections of beginning Spanish and 67 sections of intermediate Spanish, 1 with an additional 36 sections in the extension division (night school). French was not far behind, with a total of 136 sections for both levels, while the German program included 90 sections of first- and second-year courses. Even Italian, a less commonly taught language, boasted 35 sections, 23 beginning and 12 intermediate (with sections larger than in other languages and with some students still unable to enroll).
In 1983, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Fred Lukermann, appointed a task force to study the effectiveness of second-language instruction in the college. On finding that students fulfilled the requirement without acquiring a level of proficiency necessary for any real-world use of the language, the task force recommended a revised requirement, which was subsequently ratified by the appropriate bodies and took effect in the fall of 1986.
The former second-language requirement allowed students to take either five quarters of a language or three quarters of a language and three culture courses in English. Approximately 67% of the students chose the second option. The new requirement makes several innovations:
Implementing this requirement necessarily demanded extensive developmental work to set the standards for both entrance and graduation and to devise proficiency tests. A group of language educators from secondary and postsecondary institutions in Minnesota undertook this task under the leadership of Dale Lange, College of Education, University of Minnesota, and faculty members from the major language departments of the College of Liberal Arts.
Setting entrance and graduation standards required some common framework for describing levels of proficiency. The group decided to use the ACTFL proficiency guidelines for this purpose since, despite their shortcomings, they provide a comprehensive set of criteria that nonspecialists can easily understand. The following minimal levels were agreed on for French, German, and Spanish:
Although the same group began developing the tests needed to evaluate students’ proficiency, the major work in this area was subsequently done by the directors of the French, German, and Spanish language programs in collaboration with graduate research assistants from the college, all under the direction of Dale Lange. Efforts are still under way to refine the tests and develop alternative versions. Since separate tests are used for each skill (reading, listening, speaking, and writing) and for each level (entrance and graduation), there are eight tests in each language. The speaking test for graduation consists of a modified Oral Proficiency Interview, and the other tests are designed to replicate the OPI's structure and principles. The tests are administered at the beginning of the fall quarter and at the end of the fall, winter, and spring quarters. Test administration and scoring, as well as continuing test development, are carried out by a director of testing and three graduate assistants, one in each language. A group of teaching assistants in each department scores the writing tests and administers and evaluates the speaking tests.
The new requirement has entailed extensive consideration and determination of policies pertaining to its application and its testing program. A steering committee consisting of the directors of the large language programs, the director of the Language Center, the director of testing, and a student-services administrator continues to meet regularly to oversee the program and deal with any problems.
The chair of this committee, Ray Wakefield, has also been working closely with faculty members in other language programs who are attempting to develop proficiency standards and testing instruments. Faculty members in the less commonly taught languages have attended ACTFL familiarization workshops and received assistance in determining appropriate proficiency levels for the languages they teach (e.g., Urdu, Hebrew, Japanese, Irish, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese). Teachers of twenty-five less commonly taught languages have thus far indicated an interest in developing tests. Of these, eighteen have already had designated proficiency levels for graduation approved by the committee and have begun writing test items for reading, writing, and listening. A modified version of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview will serve as the exit speaking exam. In some departments offering several less commonly taught languages, this project has marked the first time that teachers have attempted to coordinate curricula and testing. The College of Liberal Arts has specified that any language program in which students may fulfill the second-language requirement will need to have proficiency standards and testing instruments in place by 1992.
Before the College of Liberal Arts adopted a proficiency-based second-language requirement, it had a fairly standard seat-time requirement for the BA degree. Working with this requirement, we experienced problems that made our work as directors of language instruction extremely difficult.
Students increasingly opted for the “culture courses” and adopted the attitude that their main task was to squeeze through the language skill courses with as little effort as possible. They viewed the seat-time requirement as one additional hoop to leap through in order to finish a BA degree. We were forced in all candor to admit that one year of a second language, especially when taught to a hostile audience, did not leave the students with a lifetime resource in the second language. Large chunks of our time were spent adjudicating student challenges to the validity of the requirement or responding to student petitions to have the requirement waived. Those days were rare and wonderful on which we could interact with a motivated student in a first-year course.
Threatened with retrenchment in the 1970s, we were introduced to a new administrative game: justify your budget. With departments at Minnesota competing with one another for scarce funds, the second-language departments decided that they could justify increased funding by increasing student numbers. Class sizes, already too large at twenty-five students a section, increased to thirty, and sometimes even to forty when students on the waiting list were allowed to enter. Of course, senior faculty members rarely taught these beginning language courses. The burden was borne almost entirely by the directors of language instruction and the TAs, and while they labored, the professors of literature and linguistics counted student numbers and complained loudly to the deans that the department desperately needed additional funding. It is not difficult to imagine the negative impact of this scheme on teachers and students in these beginning language sections.
Faced with apathetic students and a seemingly uncaring faculty, TAs became increasingly alienated from their teaching. They adopted the attitudes that they perceived in their students and in their faculty advisers, who were quick to encourage TAs, in view of the huge sections, not to neglect their academic programs by investing too much energy in their teaching. As directors of language instruction, we were constantly admonished not to demand too much of the TAs. We found ourselves in a no-win situation. If we were to maintain course quality, our only resource was our own time and energy, which were already committed to the crucial tasks of TA training and supervision. If, however, we did not divert time and energy to maintaining high course quality, we would have to accept the erosion due to increasingly adverse circumstances. We became the lightning rods for student frustration, TA alienation, and faculty anxiety.
Attempting to capture the difficulties of surviving as a director of language instruction, Trisha Dvorak uses the phrase “ivory ghetto” to describe her situation. Virtually all the symptoms she mentions in her article afflicted us during the years of the seat-time requirement. The first of these was the invisibility syndrome:
Unfortunately, the better the LPC [Language Program Coordinator] does his/her job, the more invisible it becomes . It is only when the job is not being done well, or when there is no one to occupy the LPC position, that the department normally becomes aware of the extent of the expectations for “doing things” placed upon the LPC. (219)
As the work load increased and became burdensome, we experienced a second phenomenon Dvorak includes as endemic to the LPC position—burnout:
[T]he position places extremely heavy demands on a person's time and energy … [T]he workload does not diminish greatly over time … [T]he LPC responsibility which requires the most time-intensive effort—TA training and supervision—is also that which does not so much repeat as begin anew every year, as a new group of graduate students enters the program … IT]he motivation required to continue to invest large amounts of energy and time is gradually eroded by the awareness that one's efforts are not highly valued in the dean's office, and are also considered by a number of one's colleagues to be inferior to the work of those in literature or “pure” linguistics in that they are perceived to involve little true expertise and scholarship.
(220)
And finally, we came to comprehend the isolation that Dvorak describes as ghettoization:
For LPC's, the language program becomes a ghetto, a small preserve within which they spend almost all their time, but which their colleagues enter only on occasion, and then generally with condescension rather than admiration or enthusiasm. It is perhaps not necessary to mention what happens to one's self-esteem in finding that increasingly one works for a department, but not in it. (221)
How did the role of the director of language instruction change with the new proficiency-based language requirement? At first, unfortunately, many things did not change, including almost all the conditions Dvorak cited in her article. For example, our colleagues in literature and linguistics showed no more interest in the language program than they had previously. As directors of language instruction, we were left with the entire task of implementing and developing proficiency exams, in addition to our usual duties. As a result, there was an enormous increase in the hours needed to carry out our jobs. We received neither additional released time nor part-time help to alleviate our work load.
Nonetheless, we have seen some changes for the better. At both the departmental and the collegiate levels, there is now more respect for the job that we are doing, precisely because the implementation could not function without us. Other faculty members and the deans have finally realized that special knowledge and expertise are necessary to train teaching assistants and to direct the language program. It is no longer assumed that a person without specialized training can do these jobs effectively.
In part because of this increased respect, we are beginning to get support for additional funding and positions. For example, the department of French and Italian made the case to the deans that a second director of language instruction was necessary because of the increased work load and the need to give the director of language instruction released time from the duties related to the language program. The position was approved, and a second faculty member with expertise in second-language acquisition was hired in the fall of 1989. The department of German and Dutch has also recently asked for a second position, but this request has not yet been approved by the deans. We expect that the department of Spanish and Portuguese may eventually follow the example that has been set by these other language departments.
Not only have the attitudes of colleagues and administrators changed to some degree, but many of the teaching assistants also see their jobs as more significant than they have in the past. They have come to realize that they are part of a major enterprise and that their contribution is essential. As directors, the three of us have pointed out to them that the quality of instruction provided students is extremely important and that it is not acceptable for students to pass six quarters of language instruction without being able to pass the proficiency exams. Although the teaching assistants feel more pressure to perform well than they have in the past, most of them have responded very positively and in fact have taken an increased interest in the language program. A number of the TAs in Spanish and German, for example, have worked on developing readers for the first-year program, and others have taken the initiative in assembling either slide programs to coordinate with the themes in the first-year book or video programs and listening materials for the second-year program.
Working conditions have also improved considerably. Because students must pass proficiency exams after six quarters of instruction, we were able to persuade the deans of the need to limit class size. By 1986–87 class size was back to a maximum of 25 students a section; by 1989–90 it was 23 a section; in 1990–91 it is 22 a section. The targeted limits are a maximum of 20 students a section in first-year courses and 18 a section in second-year courses. We expect to reach these goals in the next few years.
Students have also responded positively to the new language requirement. While those who grumble about having to fulfill a language requirement have not disappeared and never will, most students are studying language with more commitment and effort than students did in the past, precisely because they know they cannot graduate without passing proficiency exams in the four skill areas. We have also seen a tremendous increase in the enrollments in our third-year courses. Word is reaching the high schools, and students are now arriving at the university with better preparation in language study. Many freshmen enter directly into our second-year programs and complete the language requirement by the end of their first year. A large number of those students are continuing their study of language and are likely to minor in a second language. Enrollments in the less commonly taught languages have also increased considerably since we implemented the new requirement.
In addition, other departments and programs are beginning to draw on these more prepared students and develop programs for them. The Institute of International Studies, for example, which has over 400 majors and requires that they minor in a second language, received a Title VI grant from the US Department of Education, which designated the institute an undergraduate National Resource Center in International Studies. One of the projects that it has pursued as a part of that grant is the integration of foreign language usage and materials into regular content courses. Language trailer sections, for which students receive one credit, have been added to regular courses taught in English. One such course is Latin American Government and Politics. Students in the trailer section of that course read articles in Spanish, preferably articles that have not been translated into English and that add a new perspective on the lectures and readings assigned in English for the main course. Diverse texts are chosen to expose students to different types of language as well as to different political sectors. Thus, they read speeches, autobiographies, scholarly essays, oral histories, news stories, and government documents. Students meet once a week for two hours to discuss in Spanish the materials they have read. The course and the trailer section were taught in the winter of 1988–89 and again in the following fall. During the fall, students also listened to tapes—selections of a speech by Fidel Castro, interviews with peasants in E1 Salvador and Nicaragua, and similar materials. Students have evaluated the trailer section highly. In 1989–90, similar sections in Spanish and French were added to a course in international development designed for students who will be carrying out internships in developing countries. Another political science course, this one dealing with international systems, included special French- and Russian-language sections.
The NEH has also funded a grant application from the Institute of International Studies for foreign language study across the curriculum. For three years, beginning in the summer of 1990, eighteen faculty members will prepare content courses in political science, sociology, history, and geography to be taught in a second language. Faculty members in the social sciences will be paired with colleagues in language-literature departments to cooperate in developing curricula appropriate to the students’ level(s) of proficiency. The languages in which these courses will be taught include French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. According to the grant proposal, the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) is prepared to do the following:
(1) develop courses in major fields beyond language and literature departments to provide advanced second-language learning opportunities for students who enter CLA at or rapidly achieve the intermediate or advanced level; (2) systematically plan the development and incorporation of such courses into the regular undergraduate liberal arts curriculum, which now is also the required vehicle for students preparing to be language teachers in secondary schools; (3) sustain and extend the second-language expertise of faculty whose research and teaching focus extensively on non-English texts and cultures in such disciplines as history, political science, sociology, geography and others; and (4) sustain and extend the second-language expertise of students preparing to go abroad and returning from study abroad by offering advanced language opportunities through study of significant humanities and social science texts in their original languages. (3–4)
Students who complete a certain number of these courses will graduate with “language distinction,” an honor that will be recorded on their transcripts.
How do these initiatives affect us as directors of language instruction? They have increased our visibility within the College of Liberal Arts and have alleviated any sense of ghettoization that we may have experienced. We have been called on to serve as consultants to other programs and are considered experts in suggesting ways to improve the implementation of these programs. All this relates to the increased level of respect for our positions.
Finally, in the interest of strengthening our position, we have formed an unofficial minidepartment of six: we, the language coordinators of French, German, and Spanish; Dale Lange, a colleague in the department of curriculum and instruction; Nancy Stenson, the director of the Language Center; and Lynn Anderson Scott, the assistant to the director-coordinator of special projects of student academic support services in the College of Liberal Arts. Forced by the size of the Minnesota project to form our own emotional and intellectual support group, we have broken down departmental and collegiate administrative barriers that have never before been breached, becoming the university's Gang of Six.
In short, the effects of the new proficiency-based language requirement on our positions as directors of language instruction have been both negative and positive. On the negative side, our work loads have increased considerably, and our colleagues are not any more involved in the language program than they were originally. On the positive side, the attitudes of colleagues in literature and linguistics, administrators, and teaching assistants have begun to change; we are treated with more respect than we were in the past; collaboration across departments and across colleges has grown, and has proved very rewarding for us professionally, as well as increasing our visibility within the College of Liberal Arts and within the university as a whole. Most important, however, these changes in attitudes are bringing about material support for the directors of language instruction, resulting in additional funding and positions.
The authors are all regular faculty members at the University of Minnesota: Betsy K. Barnes is Associate Professor of French and Codirector of the French Language Program; Carol A. Klee is Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Director of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Programs; Ray M. Wakefield is Associate Professor of German and Director of the German and Dutch Language Programs. This article is based on a paper presented at the 1989 MLA convention in Washington, DC.
1 Each of these figures includes three course levels, since the academic year is composed of three ten-week quarters. Each section has approximately twenty-three students.
Dvorak, Trisha. “The Ivory Ghetto: The Place of the Language Program Coordinator in a Research Institution.” Hispania 69 (1986): 217–22.
University of Minnesota Institute of International Studies. “Foreign Language Study across the Curriculum.” Proposal submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sept. 1989.
© 1990 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
