|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Master said, To learn, and when the right time comes to try out what one had learned, is that not after all pleasure? 1
The Analects of Confucius
ACADEMICS who work to develop instruction and curriculum in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) often have a contradictory sense of both belonging and not belonging to American language education. On the one hand, our enterprise, which generally involves the majority languages of Asia and Africa, is by no means totally removed from the teaching of the most commonly taught languages in the United States—Spanish, French, and German (Modern Language Association 459). The teaching and study of all foreign languages have fundamental unifying attributes in both theory and application. Otherwise these would be no justification for the profession of language instruction or for journals such as this one. On the other hand, as the discussion presented here shows, teachers and learners of LCTLs share problems that set them apart from teachers and learners of commonly taught languages. In the past decade various associations of LCTL teachers have begun to explore those problems and the potential pathways toward solutions. But until recently those attempts have been conducted primarily within the parameters of individual languages (e.g., Japanese) or language groups (e.g., African languages).
During the summer of 1991, one group took steps toward more truly collective solutions. The Task Force for Teacher Training in the Less Commonly Taught Languages conducted a summer institute at Bryn Mawr College. 2 Various documents including this one have begun to emerge as a result of the deliberations of that institute. The intent of this paper is to discuss some of the recurrent themes that participants viewed as fundamental to learning, teaching, and teacher training in LCTLs.
The broadest common bond for all LCTLs within the foreign language teaching setting in the United States is that they are products primarily of non-Western (and consequently noncognate) cultures. Teachers of LCTLs are confronted with the daunting task of imparting knowledge of these diverse cultures within the American educational setting. What makes this task particularly challenging is that while Western and non-Western cultures share cultural universals, some elements of non-Western cultures can best (and sometimes only ) be understood within the unique framework of the relevant LCTL culture. This is not to say that it is impossible to achieve such an understanding. Indeed, it is not only possible but also enlightening.
Consider the quotation above, traditionally attributed to the Chinese educator and philosopher Confucius. On the surface, its relevance to education seems unrestricted. People engaged in teaching, whether the discipline is quantum physics, sports psychology, or a foreign language, are both initiators of and participants in this process—learning and utilizing what one has learned. But the quotation taken on its fullest meaning in the specific context of the complete Analects and in the greater context of Chinese culture. One can appreciate the universality of such a sentiment regarding learning, but one cannot fully understand its significance in the philosophical and educational traditions of China without a deeper understanding of those traditions. The statement is at once culturally transcendent and inextricably bound to its culture.
An analogous situation exists in any attempt to prioritize what we view as essential in the learning of LCTLs. At the 1991 Bryn Mawr institute, five fundamental themes recurred in participants' discussions of learning and by extension, teaching and teacher training) in the LCTLs:
These areas of concern compose the instructional framework of LCTL learning and teaching. Like Confucius's characterization of the learning process, each of these themes can be viewed as essential to education in general and to language education in particular. But only after a closer examination of language teaching can one appreciate how critical the details of these five areas are to the enterprise of LCTL instruction. These details are what make us “less common” in areas other than course enrollment. They are, in the final analysis, what we share among ourselves.
The Master said, Give me a few more years, so that I may have spent a whole fifty in study, and I believe that after all I should be fairly free from error.
The Analects of Confucius
The collective experience of LCTL teachers suggests that the primary motivation for Americans to learn an LCTL is the intention to interact with the culture of that language. Few if any of our students take Swahili, Hindi, or Thai merely to cites a foreign language requirement for college admission or a university baccalaureate requirement. They have a genuine desire—or at the least a curiosity—to know what it means to communicate with and within the target culture.
Moreover, LCTL students manifest that interest in intercultural communication with a conscious commitment to extended periods of study. Many LCTL teachers believe that their students continue for longer periods of formal instruction, provided such course options are available to them, than students of French, German, or Spanish do. Surveys to test the validity of this perception are now both possible and desirable. 3
Regardless of the curricular options available at a given institution, however, the LCTL student seeking communicative interaction within the target culture is committed to a course of study that cannot be provided within a standard four-year undergraduate degree program or within existing primary- and secondary-school curricula. The barriers to our students are twofold: for most LCTLs, a higher requisite amount of language-learning time, and for virtually all LCTLs, a lower available amount of formal language study time. Evidence of the longer language-learning time comes from the categorizations for speaking proficiency developed by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and Defense Language Institute (DLI). 4 These groupings indicate that achieving proficiency requires a far longer period of instruction in most LCTLs than in most European languages. Even if we optimistically (and unrealistically) envision uniformly average aptitude for language learning among our students, the FSI evidence predicts that it would still take half again as long for students of Russian to reach a level of spoken ability minimally acceptable for professional interaction as it would for them to reach the same ability level in Spanish, German, or French. It would take almost three times as long for our Chinese or Japanese students to reach a comparable degree of language mastery.
The primary barrier to training in LCTLs is that relatively few educational institutions even offer courses in these languages. Furthermore, most of the primary-, secondary-, and postsecondary-level institutions that offer courses in LCTLs do not go beyond the equivalent of two years of college-level instruction. Even institutions of higher education that do offer more instruction cannot hope to provide anywhere near the instruction levels prescribed by FSI and DLI. A year-long three-term language sequence at a university using a quarter system (with a five-day class week and a week and a ten-week term) would typically provide 150 hours of language instruction. Students would complete the 480 hours suggested for minimal professional-level speaking proficiency in group I languages sometime during the fourth year of language instruction—a real possibility since most four-year language programs in colleges and universities are in group I languages such as Spanish, German, and French.
The 720 hours required for the same level of proficiency in group II and group III languages would be equivalent to almost five years of five-day-a-week, one-hour-a-day language instruction. For group IV, the figure rises to over eight years. Even if this many years of course instruction were offered, it is clearly improbable that students would spend that length of time in college. Achieving this functioning skill level is increasingly conceivable for group III languages such as Russian. But for the more truly less commonly taught group II and III languages of the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia and for group IV languages, it seems unlikely that students have time or resources to achieve expertise.
It is obvious that for the LCTL student, the goal of functioning in such languages is not attainable within the existing American academic setting. Institutional resources are at best inadequate and at worst nonexistent. For such students, Confucius's wish for “fifty years in study” is not so far removed from reality. Consequently, students who achieve their goals spend more time gaining ability outside formal instruction than inside American classrooms. The inevitable conclusion for LCTL teachers is that our role is primarily preparing for and sustaining the student's self-management of a lifelong language-learning career. While this role may arguably be appropriate for all language instruction, it is a necessary condition for LCTLs.
The Master said, A man may be able to recite that three hundred Songs; but, if we given a post in the government, he cannot turn his merits to account, or when sent on a mission to far parts he cannot answer particular questions, however extensive his knowledge may be, of what use is it to him?
The Analects of Confucius
The notion of expertise discussed here does not conform to such metrics as the FSI or ACTFL proficiency scales. It does, however, include the stages defined by such scales. For by whatever standard the language learner is judged, that learner is somewhere on a continuum from novice to expert. Furthermore, the learner who is moving toward greater language expertise is one who is concurrently developing greater metaknowledge, that is, greater language-learning expertise, and an increasing ability to accomplish specific tasks with the language. The expert language learner is characterized by qualities such as perception of recurring patterns, abstract representation of problems, and development of better memory (Anderson). J. M. O'Malley and A. Chamot also note the accessibility of domain-specific knowledge related to textual context as an important characteristic of the expert learner (149). All these traits may serve as a basis for the description of expertise in language learning.
It is important to emphasize that this expertise pertains to both the learner and the teacher. Language teachers also range from novice to expert in the extent of their metaknowledge, that is, general understanding and practice of teaching, or in specific content areas. There is a qualitative difference between the way teachers at the novice stage and teachers at the expert stage conduct their careers. Movement toward such expertise is both deliberate and demanding. One does not become expert as a teacher by accident, by virtue of native ability (including being a native speaker of the target language), or by accumulation and habituation of novice-level behavior and knowledge.
Expertise does not narrowly imply either a general language ability or a specified set of skills in the language. As B. Spolsky argues, “We should normally expect functional goals to be an intrinsically unordered set; the social context in which the instruction is to take place will determine a weighing of importance” (66). Regardless of the specific purpose of language learning, expertise in the process of learning and performance of what has been learned may be singled out as the ultimate manifestation of that learning process.
Finally, as suggested by the work of H. Hammerly, expertise for the LCTL learner must encompass cultural as well as linguistic and communicative competency. To participate in a noncognate foreign culture (as virtually all of the LCTL cultures are) requires the capacity to manipulate that culture as an effective framework for solving problems in communication. To apply monocultural or cognate cultural standards simplistically in a noncognate culture inevitably leads to inappropriate behavior that linguistic skills cannot compensate for. Accordingly, the kinds of expertise we are concerned with necessarily imply analyses of the target culture as a means of accessing culturally appropriate behavior.
When the Master was Ch'en he said, Let use go back, let us go back! The little ones [disciples] at home are headstrong and careless. They are perfecting themselves in all the showy insignia of culture without any idea how to use them.
The Analects of Confucius
The LCTL leaner is motivated to learn to function in the LCTL culture. The notion of culture discussed here is consistent with Hammerly's description of linguistic and communicative competence in a second language within the larger realm of cultural competence ( Integrated Theory 20). While Hammerly considers linguistic competence the core of second-language competence and while linguistic competence is employed to achieve communicative competence, it is only within a cultural context that such communication can be realized. A culture is thus the broadest context within which both linguistic and communicative abilities can be fully realized.
One will note that, as expertise does not necessarily imply the prevalent and popular notions of proficiency, culture is a much broader concept than traditional treatments such as large C and small c cultures or Hammerly's three-way distinction between “achievement,” “informational,” and “behavioral” cultures ( Synthesis 513–15). A more useful description of culture may be Hall's taxonomy of cultures, which is based on high-context (HC) and low-context (LC) communication. Indeed, the term culture , which has been freely used but incompletely defined as a component of language learning and teaching, may prove to be best dispensed with altogether. We may be better served by terminology such as Spolsky's “social context” (25), the more expansive notion of “communicative competence” attributed to D. Hymes, or J. Bruner's physiologically absurd but conceptually acceptable “language acquisition support system.”
But however we define the culture on which LCTL learners base their learning, it is essential to make that culture the foundation for that learning. For as long as we are involved in the learning and teaching of cultures that are generally noncognate to Western cultural traditions, the potential for presenting language as an object for study divorced from any sociocultural context is a great danger. Accordingly, LCTL language instruction must focus on culture as a frame for dealing with communicative differences, not merely as the “showy insignia” of the language. This understanding of culture should govern the delivery of cultural information by the teacher but also the expectation that the student perform appropriate cultural behaviors within (and ultimately without) the language classroom.
When you know a thing, to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it. That is knowledge.
The Analects of Confucius
Much of the literature is second language acquisition deals with the qualities ascribed to an ideal language learner. But the preponderance of this literature focuses on specific elements of language-learning strategies, such as the metacognitive and cognitive classifications for ESL (English as a second language) learners proposed by A. L. Brown and A. S. Palincsar and refined to describe all foreign language students by A. U. Chamot, L. Kupper, and M. V. Impink-Hernandez. Without denying the validity of these strategies, some LCTL teachers postulate a more comprehensive strategic approach to the language-learning process: learner responsibility for the language-learning career.
Consider that the average learner of a cognate language such as Spanish can reach a minimal professional level of proficiency (FSI level 2) within the equivalent of three to four years of college-level language instruction. The teacher (or teachers) involved in the process of bringing the student to that level of proficiency has near-absolute authority in the design of input for the language-learning process. In contrast, the learner of an LCTL such as Korean can reach at best an intermediate level after an equal period of time. 5 The result is that relatively early on the path to becoming an expert and long before reaching a comparable minimal professional level of proficiency, LCTL learners assume the role of managing their learning. Moreover, while that LCTL learner undoubtedly continues to use formal instructional opportunities, the learner most likely also spends a good portion of the lifelong language-learning career without the benefit of a teacher who can facilitate the language-learning process. In short, at a much lower level of expertise in the language, all elements of traditional teacher responsibility—from selection of study materials to maintaining resources for error correction—become the student's responsibility.
Emphasis on the importance of student responsibility by no means minimizes the LCTL teacher's critical role in promoting and developing that sense of responsibility during the beginning phase of the student's language-learning career. Along with providing learners with the best possible opportunities for learning, the successful teacher helps learners become efficient managers of their learning. Indeed, an analogous situation exists for teachers who must negotiate their way toward expertise, aided by occasional training opportunities and developing research.
Despite the optimistic sense of self-reliance that learner (and teacher) responsibility implies, LCTL learners must accept the limitations in their lifelong language-learning careers. The ultimate concession learners must make is that whatever wealth of strategies they may employ, the ideal goal—the ability to function successfully within the target culture—is something that they will likely never fully achieve. Equally important, the teacher's responsibility in the development of particular expertise is to realize that certain teaching expertise goals may be unattainable. In short, in a lifelong language-learning career, there is a responsibility to recognize both what one knows and what one does not know, for both student and teacher. In Confucian terms, this is the essence of knowledge.
Tsu-lu asked, When one hears a maxim, should one at once seek occasion to put it into practice? The Master said, Your father and elder brother are alive. How can you whenever you hear a maxim at once put it into practice? Jan Ch'iu asked, When one hears a maxim, should one at once seek occasion to put it into practice? The Master said, When one hears it, one should at once put in into practice. Kung-Hsi Hua said, When Yu asked, “When one hears a maxim, should one at once put it into practice?” you said, “You have a father and elder brother alive.” But when Ch'iu asked, “When one hears a maxim, should one at once put it into practice,” you said, “When you hear it, put it into practice.” I am perplexed, and would venture to ask how this was. The Master said, Ch'iu is backward; so I urged him on. Yu is fanatical about Goodness; so I held him back.
The Analects of Confucius
On the most basic level, the local conditions for language learning extend to the level of the individual learner. Successful teaching methodologies must often be as disparate as the learning qualities of Ch'iu and Yu. But the broader sense of the term local conditions encompasses all needs of a given language-learning community, including (but not restricted to) the learners, the teachers, the administrators, and the resources of the field. The applicability of any instructional approach or assessment metric is, in the words of Spolsky, “natural only within an agreed or imposed set of goals. … the ideology of the programme or the specific goals of its students or teachers play a major part in determining which set of goals is appropriate and how they must be ordered” (66–77).
J. C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers have presented one potential process for defining local conditions. Building from a needs analysis of administrative, instructional, logistical, and psychosocial considerations, one can formulate a set of learning objectives appropriate for a given language-learning environment. The program is designed to best meet those objectives. Richards and Rodgers also advocate an approach of informed eclecticism “when a close degree of fit between method and program objectives is lacking. … A policy of uniformed eclecticism (which is how the term eclectic or eclectic method is often used) would be where techniques, activities, and features from different methods are selected without explicit reference to program objectives.” Evaluation, incorporating “descriptive,” “observational,” “effectiveness,” and “comparative” data, is an integral to the program design as methodology and materials are (158).
The challenge that lies ahead for collective efforts such as the one initialed at the Bryn Mawr institute is to maintain a positive problem-solving approach comprehensive enough to address the truly common difficulties facing LCTL instructors and flexible enough to adjust to the strengths and weaknesses of particular language-learning settings. What has been presented here, as well as in more extensive documents (see Walker and McGinnis), is a framework consistent with that locally responsive spirit.
To paraphrase the opening quotation, the right time has come to try out what we have discovered about learning, teaching, and teacher training in the LCTLs. Already, a number of Chinese instructors are working toward developing a language-specific framework. Another proposal for a program for training teachers and trainers of teachers of Southeast Asian languages, possibly within the setting of the annual SEASSI (Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute), remains in development. Other languages and language groups are working toward their own particular applications of the task force's recommendations. Underlying all this activity remains the common core of the five themes presented here.
The purpose of presenting these themes is not to divorce LCTL instruction from the rest of foreign language education in this country but to facilitate integration and interaction. Only then will the acronym LCTL take on a more appropriate definition, one that is purely quantitative, not qualitative. That is, languages that are taught less will not necessarily be taught less well, any more than languages that are more commonly taught will be taught with more quality. For the time being, even if we are still less commonly taught, we are nonetheless more commonly committed to contributing to the American community of foreign language professionals. 6
The author is Assistant Professor of Chinese at the University of Maryland, College Park.
1 Galal Walker suggested the translation of shi xi zhi ‘when the right time comes to try out.’ The remainder of the translation (as well as all other quotations from the Analects ) are from Waley (83, 126, 172–73, 113, 91, 157–58).
2 The Task Force for Teacher Training in the Less Commonly Taught Languages was organized by the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL). The institute, which took place 23–28 June 1991, consisted of nineteen professors representing eight languages or language groups: African languages, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Turkish.
3 A recent survey conducted under the joint sponsorship of the United States-Japan Foundation and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission provides some statistics for students of Japanese, albeit based on a survey of predictions by postsecondary general administrators and not on actual student enrollments. See Jorden and Lambert 130.
4 The FSI figures (see Appendix A) must be used with caution in an academic context because they represent only speaking skills and assume FSI level 3 as the desired target level; in spite of changes instituted in response to the proficiency movement, academic programs frequently assign more emphasis to reading and strive for a host of accomplishments in language acquisition in which level 1 or 2 may be a perfectly acceptable goal. While I agree that further research is needed to examine the acquisition of LCTL skills in a variety of academic settings, I argue nonetheless that we can accept the FSI figures as the least partial empirical confirmation that learners require a longer period of study for most LCTLs than for more commonly taught languages to reach a certain level of competence—a justification for the subjective characterization of LCTLs as difficult languages.
5 Of course, if the student has the opportunity to participate in an overseas study program or in a true immersion environment, such as the summer programs at Middlebury College or Indiana University, the LCTL student may also be able to achieve that level of proficiency within four years. But the attainment of a minimal professional level of proficiency for average learners of a cognate language will likely take less than four years should they have similar foreign or summer immersion study opportunities. Such alternative curricular structures effectively increase the length of training for any language, and comparisons to the FSI classroom-based figures are no longer adequate. The point is that if we assume, for the sake of argument, similar domestic classroom-based learning environments, the LCTL student cannot expect to achieve the same level of competence as the cognate language student can within four years.
6 The author is deeply indebted to Galal Walker for his insightful and meticulous comments and to the anonymous reviewer for thoughtful criticisms.
Anderson, J. R. Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. New York: Freeman, 1985.
Brown, A. L., and A. S. Palincsar. “Inducing Strategies Learning from Texts by Means of Informed, Self-Control Training,” Topics in Learning and Learning Disabilities 2.1 (1982): 1–17.
Bruner, J. “The Social Context of Language Acquisition.” Language and Communication 1 (1981): 155–78.
Chamot, A. U., Kupper, and M. V. Impink-Hernandez. A Study of Learning Strategies in Foreign Language Instruction: Findings of the Longitudinal Study. McLean: Interstate Research Assn., 1988.
Hammerly, H. An Integrated Theory of Language Teaching. Blaine: Second Lang., 1985.
———. Synthesis in Second Language Teaching. Blaine: Second Lang., 1982.
Hymes, D. “Toward Linguistic Competence.” AILA Review 2 (1985): 9–23.
Jorden, Eleanor H., and Richard D. Lambert. Japanese Language Instruction in the United States: Resources, Practice, and Investment Strategy. Washington: Natl. Foreign Lang. Center, 1991.
Modern Language Association. “Table: MLA Survey of College Foreign Language Enrollments.” Modern Language Journal 75 (1991): 459.
O'Malley, J. M., and A. Chamot. Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Richards, J. C., and Theodore S. Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.
Spolsky, B. Conditions for Second Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
Waley, Arthur, trans. The Analects of Confucius. New York: Vintage-Random, 1989.
Walker, G. “Gaining Place: The Less Commonly Taught Languages in American Schools.” ACTFL Annual Meeting. Boston, 17–19 Nov. 1989.
Walker, G., and S. McGinnis. “Prolegomena to the Learning of the Less Commonly Taught Languages: The Foundation for the Training of Teachers.” Unpublished essay, 1991.
Group I: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Haitian Creole, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish
| Length of Training * | Aptitude for Language Learning | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Average | Superior | |
| 8 weeks (240 hours) | 1 | 1/1 + | 1+ |
| 16 weeks (480 hours) | 1 + | 2 | 2 + |
| 24 weeks (720 hours) | 2 | 2+ | 3 |
| * The number of hours is the theoretical maximum at 30 hours a week. | |||
Group II: Bulgarian, Dari, Farsi, Greek, Hindi, Indonesia, Malay, Urdu
| Length of Training | Aptitude for Language Learning | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Average | Superior | |
| 16 weeks (480 hours) | 1 | 1/1 + | 1 + /2 |
| 24 weeks (720 hours) | 1 + | 2 | 2 + /3 |
| 44 weeks (1320 hours) | 2/2 + | 2 + /3 | 3/3 + |
Group III: Amharic, Bengali, Burmese, Czech, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungrian, Khmer (Cambodian), Lao, Nepali, Pilipino, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhala, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese
| Length of Training | Aptitude for Language Learning | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Average | Superior | |
| 16 weeks (480 hours) | 0+ | 1 | 1/1 + |
| 24 weeks (720 hours) | 1+ | 2 | 2/2 + |
| 44 weeks (1320 hours) | 2 | 2+ | 3 |
Group IV: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean
| Length of Training | Aptitude for Language Learning | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Average | Superior | |
| 16 weeks (480 hours) | 0+ | 1 | 1 |
| 24 weeks (720 hours) | 1 | 1+ | 1+ |
| 44 weeks (1320 hours) | 1+ | 2 | 2+ |
| 80–90 weeks (2400–2760 hours) | 2+ | 3 | 3+ |
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
