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PEOPLE living today are very familiar with Marshall McLuhan's vision of the “global village,” and we have become accustomed to this illusion. We have experienced the centripetal tendency of world cultures to be drawn together toward an apparently shared core of values and interests, served up in large part by the mass media (print, video, and audio). This centripetal effect is most evident in the worldwide youth culture of sport and popular music. The new electronic age is also supposed to draw the world together with shared databases, computer translation of text, and immediate access to each other by modem, E-mail, and fax. Nannerl Keohane, the president of Duke University, however, sees these technological changes as only “the electronic illusion of being in touch” ( Boston Globe 22); we may think we are on the same wavelength when in fact we hold very different presuppositions and assumptions, and the lack of face-to-face contact allows us to ignore one another's sensitivities and to express our usually politely concealed aggressions.
At the same time we observe a centrifugal tendency. Worldwide efforts are under way to bring us together in new and cooperative ways in larger and larger shared-interest groups, for political and commercial advantage but also for such global concerns as the environment, health, human rights, and democratic representation. Present-day Europe provides us with a clear example of this centripetal, centrifugal tension: one day it seems well on the way to becoming unified; the next, it seems to be drawing nervously apart. There appears to be a tug-of-war between the desire to enjoy the many benefits of working (and playing) together to achieve wider ends and the equally strong desire to be what one is, or at least to have one's ethnic or cultural identity recognized and respected. Many apparently stable, established communities struggling to absorb immigrant and refugee newcomers are being made aware in the sharpest of terms of the locally rooted lifestyles and convictions of cohesive minorities (and even minorities within minorities).
This complicated and perplexing new-old world is forcing us to rethink seriously the bases of our young people's education. Of paramount importance to their future success will be the ability to interact harmoniously with and understand others whose values and aspirations are different from their own. Developing these capacities requires us to be flexible in our thinking and acting as we find ourselves in new situations and changing circumstances. In this context the present trend toward internationalization of undergraduate and graduate education becomes important.
Internationalization is a hot topic on campuses today. One approach has been to “internationalize” the curriculum by offering a smorgasbord of courses, such as Medieval Literature of Outer Mongolia, The Marital Habits of Peewee Tribes under Colonialist and Noncolonialist Regimes, and Astrological Beliefs of Extraterrestrials, that satisfy a requirement in Understanding the World We Live In. Another approach is to “internationalize” the student body by sending large segments of it to study in other countries, often English-speaking and Western European in culture. As often as not, these students settle into American enclaves where they are effectively insulated, or insulate themselves, from the suspect influence of local ideas and mores. Sometimes this approach entails setting up branch campuses overseas, where students can complete their home institution's requirements while eating sushi, croque-monsieur , or enchiladas. Since it has been observed that overseas students in the United States who have not integrated well with American students sometimes return to their own countries as anti-American as they were when they came, we may wonder about the effect of such hothouse experiences on American students.
In 1978, the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, set up by President Carter, attempted to force foreign languages into a shotgun marriage with international studies. Both the foreign language and the international studies professions were somewhat started, and both have been forging ahead, each in its own way, since that time. Except for a few experimental efforts here and there, each party has seemed to remain fairly oblivious of the thinking and actions of the other.
Yet there have been for some years enthusiastic and vocal allies calling for collaboration of foreign languages with other disciplines. In 1984, one symposium on international business stated that “business needs people who understand foreign languages and cultures—who, through learning at least one language, have changed their mindset, have lost the ‘we’-‘they’ syndrome, who are alert to cultural differences” (Micou 88). In their 1984 Guidelines , the American Association of State Colleges and Universities asserted that “international education is a fundamental part of general and professional studies. It is the preparation for social, political, and economic realities that humans experience in a culturally diverse and competitive, interdependent world” (Goodwin and Nacht, Missing 20). In an attempt “to internationalize the entire discipline root and branch,” the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has mandated that their members cultivate an international dimension in their programs (Goodwin and Nacht, Missing 20). 1
There is a constant flow of recommendations and reports from individual universities pleading for the development of what the American Council on Education (ACE) has called “international competence” ( What We Don't Know ). These institutions are demanding a “usable competence” in foreign languages that can be incorporated into general education and core curricula and into the courses and research of departments across the campus. Foreign languages belong everywhere, and cooperation of foreign language departments is being sought. The type of competence the associations cited have in mind, however, cannot be achieved within a “basic skills” sequence but demands serious attention to language courses at the advanced level, which David P. Benseler has called “the most neglected area of our entire enterprise” (187). Departments should read and discuss the ACE's 1984, 1989, and 1992 publications (listed in Works Cited), as a yardstick for assessing their readiness in this area and develop plans for the future.
Friends of foreign languages have been doing their part also in Congress—the Panettas, Simons, Bradleys, Dodds, and Borens, among others (see Rivers, “Internationalization”). We can keep abreast of these developments through the regular bulletins of the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS). 2 With the passing in 1994 of the Goals 2000 Educate America bill, which supports the establishing of standards of achievement in foreign languages as a core subject, we have new responsibilities. Opportunities are being created for us, but we must act to profit from them before legislative attention turns elsewhere.
One major problem at the moment is that the term internationalization does not have a very clear denotation. We need an agreed-upon framework and a common terminology within which to conduct discussion, so that we may establish a fruitful collaboration among interested bodies and recognize where one another's contributions fit into the picture. Stephen Arum suggests the use of international education as the superordinate term, drawing under its wings three areas: international content of curricula, international movement of scholars and students concerned with training and research, and technical assistance and educational cooperation programs that engage American education in efforts abroad (including agricultural, economic, industrial, and educational advising; the work of such service organizations as the Peace Corps; and some English as a foreign language teaching) (8). To these I would add a further important category: internationalization of campus life, that is, promoting awareness of other cultures and ways of thinking through extracurricular cross-cultural experiences, which would ideally include outreach to the surrounding community. In these four areas we are seeking to develop international competence.
In the short space of this article, I can only touch on detailed proposals in two of these areas: internationalization of the curriculum and internationalization of campus life. (For discussion of international movement of scholars and students 3 and technical cooperation and educational assistance programs, see Rivers, “Internationalization.”)
As early as 1984, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities stated that “international education is a fundamental part of general and professional studies. It is the preparation of social, political, and economic realities that humans experience in a culturally diverse and competitive, interdependent world.” Internationalization of the curriculum has now become an urgent priority for many fields under the academic umbrella.
Foreign language departments can purvey the international perspective by providing language courses geared to the needs of the student's major discipline, whatever it may be, thus broadening students' knowledge with detailed information on the historical and contemporary culture of the speakers of the language, which affects the way the speakers act in professional contexts. The graduate of the program will then be better prepared to operate within that culture or in association with its culture bearers (whether as a health professional, technical or agricultural adviser, representative of a business or international agency, lawyer, engineer, or educator). In this way we who are trained and experienced in analyzing and understanding other cultures, or ought to be, can make a significant contribution to the college curriculum.
In the past, the collaboration between foreign languages and other disciplines has most frequently taken the form of a dual major with the professional field or a minor in the language with a major in the professional field. There is great potential here to cross-departmental collaboration. The German department at Stanford University, for instance, has developed double majors with the economics, international relations, political science, history, and engineering programs (described, along with other models, in Rivers, “Undergraduate Program 2” 35). Beyond such arrangements for our own students, however, language departments should now seek every opportunity to collaborate in developing interesting courses, taught in the foreign language, that meet the needs of majors and concentrators from other departments. This task will involve much networking to find out what supplementation other departments would find useful.
If internationalization of the curriculum is to provide students with more than an outsider's monocultural view of the affairs, perspectives, and achievements of other national or cultural groups, students across the campus, not just language majors, will need to be able to read fluently and write short reports and statements in another language, understand it when spoken, and speak it comprehensibly in a socially acceptable way, so that they may analyze authentic documents (written or audiovisual), interview persons involved with their areas of study, make short investigative trips, when necessary, to areas where further information or documentation can be unearthed, or undertake internships without undue stress. Just muddling through with enough of the language to establish rudimentary contact or to get a rough idea of what one has read is not enough. For professional purposes the language user must be precise in comprehension and production. The call from across the campus is for advanced proficiency in a language, which is where we should concentrate our efforts. This undertaking will require careful rethinking of the content and presentation of our language course offerings at the advanced level to make their value evident.
With such expansion in mind, foreign language departments must begin to take much more seriously their responsibility to develop a progressive series of advanced language courses, varied in content and focus and with clearly indicated entrance levels, which provides a sequential program of increasing difficulty; such a program will encourage entering and continuing students to continue language study at the level at which they are already proficient.
Richard J. Light's 1992 survey at Harvard found that entering students who had already reached a level where they felt comfortable using the language were much more likely to enroll in courses in that language above the requirement level than those who were still having difficulties upon entrance. For this reason, as attention turns again to the improvement of language teaching in secondary and elementary schools, and particularly to the articulation of levels that national standards will require, it is time for colleges and universities that value an international perspective to make clear to high schools that they prefer to admit students who have already mastered the basics of a language and who are advancing toward usable competence. The dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University took this course in 1993 by sending high schools and preparatory schools a brochure that urged prospective candidates to prepare themselves for advanced study of a language upon admission ( Choosing ). In Australia, where the need to develop greater international competence in the population is now a national concern, a number of universities give bonus credit in the admissions process to students who demonstrate that they have attained an advanced level of foreign language competence in high school. 4
Even with such measures, entering students with an advanced level of competence will be willing to continue their study of the language only if they are offered a selection of attractive and challenging courses, varied in approach and content (literary, cultural, or professional). 5 These courses should be calibrated to different levels on a placement device, which should be regarded not as a means by which students may pass out of a language requirement but as a guide to their current level for further study.
If students are to reach Superior level on the ACTFL proficiency scale (and confident professional use requires this level or, at a minimum, Advanced Plus), they will need access to a selection of courses equivalent to an eight-year sequence with clearly indicated entry proficiency levels (that is, sixteen progressively more linguistically demanding semester-long courses, starting at the beginning level). Such a continuum is not too much for a large institution to provide. Here I am talking about giving students the opportunity to achieve a level of competence equivalent to eight years of study at college, not to an eight-year sequence through primary school, junior high school, and high school. 6 Students would not need eight years to pass through such an articulated sequence, of course, nor would they have the time. They would enter and reenter it at whichever level (with whichever content) met their needs, and this would be the attraction of the sequence for students who might otherwise drop out of language study after the basic courses. A long sequence provides for students who have learned languages in high school, junior high school, and now more and more in primary or elementary school, enabling them to continue in college at the level at which they feel confident and from which they can profit. These students may very well enter the sequence at the equivalent of the sixth-, seventh-, or eighth-year level. Returnees from study abroad and many graduate students would also profit from this advanced level of language study. We must always capitalize on previous knowledge and experience, which we do not always do in the present system. 7
Where the size of the department does not warrant such an ambitious program, a scaled-down version, respecting the same principles, can be inaugurated, with the intention of expanding as enrollments and interest increase. Small colleges, hamstrung by the size of the student body and available faculty, can maintain the spirit of diversification at different levels by offering certain courses in a two-year alternating sequence and allowing students to take some courses as independent study with the help of modern media. Small college faculties have the advantage of closer personal networks with their counterparts in other disciplines, which can facilitate efforts to provide the types of courses students in these areas will need professionally. Enterprising faculties are also more frequently rewarded for exemplary undergraduate programs, and a number of scholars from small colleges are already recognized as leaders in innovation. 8
If the courses are well articulated, students of high aptitude who begin studying the language in college will leap ahead through the offerings as their developing skill, motivation, and interests enable them. Others will rejoin the program at an appropriate level after an interval, as their career goals become clearer. Fortunately for us as language teachers, all subject matters are grist to our classroom mill, so there is no dearth of content possibilities for nonrepetitive courses in a long sequence. So long as the students are hearing, seeing, and using the language in ways that interest and involve them, they will progress in language control. If we have provided them with experience in using the language confidently for their own purposes, they will not hesitate to use it later in professional career tasks. Whether they eventually use it, or some other language, for practical purposes or not, a mind-broadening experience of another culture will serve them well in life within any modern society.
Where foreign language instructors have expertise in another field, they can use content from this discipline in advanced-level (sometimes upper-intermediate) courses where students feel at ease in dealing with sophisticated content entirely in the language. Departments have used this approach for many years to teach foreign languages through the study of literature, history, civilization and contemporary culture, political and social institutions, and scientific material. These traditional content areas are now being expanded to provide courses of interest to professionals in health care, law enforcement, and hotel management. Career-related material is introduced and discussed in the target language, and students apply both the language and the material in simulated work situations. Where possible, the course allows students to interact with native speakers by serving as aides for local professional groups in internships or work-study plans of some kind. Courses in language for business now often prepare students for overseas certificates or diplomas (Frommer); these classes more and more frequently use the case-study method in which students actually figure out appropriate professional reactions to simulated business developments, using only the target language (Dow and Ryan).
Although any subject matter is possible material for language courses, provided that it is taught in the language and serves as a basis for classroom discussion and participation, it must be emphasized that the foreign language instructor should be, or should become, well versed in the field being taught through the language. Teaching this type of class is not for amateurs, if the language department courses are to be responsible, reputable, and acceptable for credit in the major discipline departments.
Another approach, which is becoming popular, is foreign language across the curriculum (FLAC). Here the foreign language instructor assists a professor in another discipline (who teaches his or her regular course in English or the foreign language) by providing tutorial sections to elucidate and discuss foreign language material related to the course or culturally determined aspects of professional behavior. These courses differ from the departmental courses described above in that they are subject-matter courses normally offered in another discipline. This approach is particularly appropriate in core and general education courses with an international dimension, and it encourages experts in other fields to include more reading (and, if possible, discussion) in another language as an incentive for students to use their requirement language to increase their knowledge (Lambert, “Languages”). FLAC courses have been implemented successfully at Earlham College (Jurasek), Saint Olaf College (Allen, Anderson, and Narvaez), and the State University of New York, Binghamton (Badger, Rose, and Straight), among others. Alternatively, foreign language faculty members will offer their own courses with international content that is acceptable for the foreign cultures, humanities, or international studies segment of the foreign cultures, humanities, or international studies segment of the institution's core or required general education program; these courses are taught in the language, with readings and assignments also in the language.
For both these approaches, students should have an upper-intermediate or, preferably, advanced level of competence. Some evaluations of FLAC courses have already demonstrated that students with a low level of proficiency flounder when faced with authentic textual materials in specialized fields (Sudermann and Cisar). Tedious decoding of difficult texts does not develop motivation to read autonomously in the language at a later date.
Since neither instructors nor students known which languages the latter will need eventually, foreign language departments would render students a service by offering within a core or departmental program a course in linguistic and cultural awareness. Such a course, which could be called Languages and Cultures: What Is Their Essence?, should range beyond the bounds of one language and teach students how to identify and categorize the distinctive aspects of a new language and culture—the kinds of things that hang together in expressing aspects of meaning, cultural and social as well as semantic—enabling them to discern “a system of behaviors, attitudes, and values that has internal coherence” (Steele and Suozzo 117). As Claire Kramsch points out, “Culture is difference, variability, and always a potential source of conflict” in intercultural encounters (1). Since our students will move into more and more unpredictable linguistic and cultural environments in our centripetal, centrifugal world, they need to learn how to adapt quickly to an unfamiliar language and culture, how to work out what is going on, if they are to work harmoniously within very different societies or in relationships with different others.
For many whose future careers take unexpected turns, techniques for breaking the code of a new language and culture will be valuable, not as means to describe in a scholarly way previously undescribed languages or cultures, but as sensitization procedures for everyday professional life. As distinct from exploratory language courses, sometimes referred to as FLEX courses—in which students, before undertaking the study of a particular language, learn about how languages work by considering aspects of a number of languages—the type of course proposed here would be not a pre-language-learning exploratory experience but a specially designed linguistic-anthropological course for students who had already gained a feeling for the features of at least one language other than their own and had begun to understand the ways different cultures influence behavior. Majors and concentrators who intended to teach a language would undoubtedly profit from such a course, since it would deepen their understanding of their discipline and give them many new ideas for course development, preparing them to raise the language awareness of their future students.
A course of this kind would provide an opportunity for students who had studied different languages and cultures to come together, along with interested bilinguals and monolinguals, to share their insights into how the languages they know express meanings and what is important culturally to people who speak these languages. Optimally, the course would be designed as a series of research projects, with students in small groups working on particular aspects of languages and cultures and sharing their findings with their classmates. Students would also seek out the linguistically and culturally different within the college and in the surrounding community, sometimes beginning with multiple generations of their own families, to apply their newly acquired knowledge and techniques for penetrating languages and cultures. With this approach the course would change from year to year, as it developed its own subject matter in relation to the different languages and cultures investigated by successive groups of students.
It might be useful to make such a course a team-teaching enterprise, with instructors from several languages, although this approach would not be essential since students would share with one another their experiences in various languages and cultures. The course would provide excellent preparation for students planning to participate in a study abroad, exchange, or internship program, who would take with them a research project related to the course—one that would require them to delve more deeply into the other culture through personal contact with its culture bearers. Faculty members involved in technical assistance or research abroad would also profit from auditing such a course, since it would help them avoid cultural blunders on site that might hinder their work. For those not planning to travel abroad, this training would broaden and deepen their appreciation and understanding of diversity in their own community and of the problems faced by immigrants, refugees, and migrant workers.
The kinds of contributions we are discussing require foreign language instructors (language teaching and culture specialists, or LTCS) to network, to develop cross-campus and cross-disciplinary associations, in order to learn more about the concerns of other departments and schools—where these groups are directing their energies, what new developments are taking place in their fields, and what their potential for collaboration may be. Where entrenched faculty members seemed uninterested in new liaisons and do not recognize the need for a broader outlook on the language work of the department, we may have to work around them (in the true sense of circumvent ) while educating them to new possibilities. Confrontation arouses hostilities, but circumvention frequently goes unobserved while experimentation is under way. We must learn to act like chess masters, pursuing our goals obliquely rather than exhausting our resources on direct attacks. A successful pilot program will usually win support at the crucial moment of the final vote.
The foreign language profession can also contribute to international studies by sharing its expertise in teaching and discussion techniques. Foreign language departments have devoted much time and energy to preparing their instructors to conduct lively and participatory classes geared to students' needs and interests. A five-year assessment of Harvard undergraduate education that surveyed students and alumni came up with the “unexpected finding” that “foreign languages and literatures [taught fully in the language] are the most widely appreciated course” on campus (Light 11, 69). In fact, the study found, “classes in foreign languages receive the highest rating [in undergraduate student evaluations] of all groups of courses at Harvard College,” and ninety-four percent of alumni in the survey urged students to take courses in foreign languages and literatures even if they tested out of the requirement (70, 75). The report attributes this “strong enthusiasm” to the way “[language] classes are structured to maximize personal engagement and collegial interaction” with constant feedback on progress (75–76). Students reported that, despite heavy workloads, their interest in the subject matter remained high (71). Both general education courses with an international focus and specialized courses, offered in other departments, with a strong foreign language component would benefit from the enthusiasm and teaching skill that well-trained and motivated foreign language instructors would bring to their team-teaching assignments.
For these aims to be achieved, however, the language program (which subsumes the teaching of the culture of its speakers) must be upgraded so that it becomes an autonomous unit within the department, with its own goals and directions, its own tenured faculty members, and respect for its work equal to that for literature and linguistics. It cannot remain a mere servant, preparing a few students to undertake advanced studies in literature, nor should it spend endless repetitive hours on elementary language studies, which students soon, and happily, forget. The real work of the autonomous language and culture program is developing courses at all levels for students with different objectives, with a special emphasis on advanced-level study so that students can attain acceptable levels of international competence.
To be able to develop a long, articulated sequence of courses with content that attracts students, future instructors will need preparation different from that which most of them receive at the present time. Apart from knowledge of how languages are learned, what teachers can do to accommodate the diversity of learning styles and student interests, and how to incorporate most effectively the various media that provide instant access to contemporary life in other cultures, teachers of a language need a deep knowledge of how that language expresses the sociolinguistic and cultural reality experienced by its speakers, and many departments do not yet offer such training. One “civilization” course (often devoted to history) is not enough. Thorough preparation in this area is provided by some language departments but is unavailable in others because they have been slow to train, appoint, and tenure faculty members who can provide this kind of instruction. Language teachers of the future will need a wider background in many disciplines in order to interpret contemporary life and thought to students, to provide exciting content for language courses in the long sequence, and to participate in FLAC programs and efforts to internationalize the school or university. A serious dedication to internationalization will require that departments rethink the options for PhD programs to provide better-prepared LTCSs, as well as usual literature and linguistics graduates (Rivers, Teaching 295–300).
Unfortunately, there still remains the question of faculty rewards. Will LTCSs who serve the campus by taking a broader view of their task be promoted and tenured? Will their interdisciplinary expertise and research be recognized, or will they be driving more nails into their academic coffins? In some institutions, we already have senior faculty members who have realized that modern colleges and universities need recognize less traditional contributions to scholarship as worthy of consideration for promotion and tenure. This attitude must become more widespread. It is up to LTCSs to demonstrate their scholarly and applied leadership in publications and original materials development, as well as in excellent teaching and supervision, but it behooves the senior faculty members of the departments to recognize the growth of interdisciplinarity within the academy, particularly in the interrelated scholarly fields that come under the umbrella of second language acquisition and foreign language learning. It is time also to reconsider the value of materials preparation, as more and more LTCSs are called on to develop courses in areas where few resources are readily available. It is very time-consuming and requires much expertise to search for appropriate materials and bring them together effectively for classroom presentations and learning units and to write courseware for computers (especially when video and audio components are incorporated), yet these modern materials are considered indispensable to bring students into authentic contact with the other language and culture. Unless the resulting production is recognized as valid academic achievement, we will develop two-tiered departments of mandarins who receive most of the recognition and underrewarded laborers who attend to the needs of the majority of language students.
It has frequently been observed that college students learn as much from one another as they do from the structured curriculum—from discussions of diverse viewpoints, observation of one another's ways, and assessment of one another's values and political and religious ideas. With large numbers of overseas students on our campuses (in some places as high as 18 percent of the student body and commonly from 5 to 7 percent), as well as local students of diverse ethnic backgrounds, undergraduates now have an excellent opportunity to get to know the world without leaving home.
In 1990–91, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (23 Oct. 1991: A39, 41), of the 407,500 students from overseas on American campuses, the largest percentage studied business and management, closely followed by engineering, then mathematics and computer science. Of the 70,727 United States students who studied abroad in 1980–90, the majority were students in the liberal arts, social sciences, and foreign languages. Of these students, 77 percent studied in Europe (most in the United Kingdom), only 9 percent studied in Latin America, and 10 percent were scattered throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania (which includes the English-speaking countries of Australia and New Zealand). It would seem that the best opportunity most American students have to make contact with very different languages and cultures is still on their own campuses. Because of their natural tendency to hang out with their own kind, however, many will not seek this experience without a little prodding in the form of careful planning not only by the campus office of international affairs (if there is one) but also by the foreign language departments, which can do a great deal to bring about these contacts.
The Oregon State System of Higher Education has tackled head-on the problem of internationalizing its campuses and the surrounding communities with its well-structured International Cultural Service Program (ICSP). This program empowers Oregon state universities to utilize a number of their foreign students (300 across the state) as an educational resource to give Americans at all levels of instruction a better understanding of international affairs. The students work with elementary and high school students, as well as with undergraduates at the university and in community colleges; they also talk to youth groups and civic and service organizations (ICSP). The State University of New York, Binghamton, uses international graduate students from different disciplines as language resource specialists in FLAC courses (Badger, Rose, and Straight).
Overseas students in American colleges and universities are involved in campus life in many other ways. They participate in campus awareness weeks and international days, festivals, film series, and concerts. They are adopted into host families who include them in all their family activities. They help as counselors in summer youth camps. They live cheek by jowl with young Americans in residences, dormitories, and international houses. They eat with them in cafeterias, often from international menus set up to provide variety. Many instruct American undergraduates as teaching assistants in various disciplines. All these normal activities provide many opportunities for international students to mix with and make friends with young Americans and students from nations other than their own, whose viewpoints they also need to understand.
What more can foreign language departments do? They can adopt as their own students, from whatever country, who speak the languages they teach. First of all, they can set up buddy relationships between American language students and native speakers arriving on campus, so that the language learners can help the newcomers orient themselves to the campus, the university, and American life. These relationships sometimes lead to weekly exchanges of services, for example, the American student and the overseas student exchanging one hour of conversation a week in each of their languages, or setting up regular phone conversations. This approach is also a valuable way to provide returnees from study abroad programs with opportunities for language maintenance. Language students can be sent across campus to interview foreign students in business, engineering, or agriculture on life in their countries, their early education, family traditions, ambitions for the future, and so on, for presentations in class. Many of these students from abroad can be located through the English as a second language department, others through the international office or dormitory directors.
Organizers of language tables in residence halls and language houses should make a special effort each year to invite newly arrived native speakers to join them on a regular basis. Foreign students can be recruited to take part in campus radio or television programs, to help with voice-overs on documentaries, to record interesting materials on their countries for audio and video language laboratory materials, or to help stage plays in their languages. Departments can involve them in departure orientations for students or faculty members preparing for exchanges or study abroad and bring them into class to elucidate cultural readings or enliven discussions of cultural political frames of reference. Here is an opportunity for native speakers, fresh from their homelands, to give an authentic cultural perspective on matters under discussion and to explain the presuppositions and implied meanings of texts. Overseas students may also be recruited as teaching assistants in language classes, should they prove to have a good interactive style with American undergraduates and be willing to accept guidance and some training in teaching.
Departments should explore more fully sister-city arrangements, involving students from the countries in which these cities are situated to help plan celebrations of their culture or set up exhibitions and displays of the special cultural achievements of sister-city artists, musicians, or artisans. Once one begins brainstorming along these lines, there is no end to the possibilities for having foreign students develop close working relationships and friendships with young Americans, who cannot but profit from the constant exposure to other viewpoints.
One pitfall that foreign language departments need to avoid is the development of a bichauvinism in which the student, instead of being convinced that American ways and ideas are always right and proper, now believes that only Americans and Germans (or Americans and the French, or Americans and Hispanics) have a corner on culture and right thinking. To avoid this eventuality, foreign language departments should encourage their students to become international in outlook, to participate in international activities on campus, and make friends with foreign students, many of whom are also looking for opportunities to practice and develop languages they learned in school as well as their English.
If internationalizing endeavors within our universities proceed without including knowledge of other languages and cultures, we will transport the ethnocentric mistakes of the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Newly influential nations and young nation-states will find this failure unacceptable; success in international contacts will go to those professionals who are able to meet these countries' needs by dealing with foreign colleagues in a comprehensible way that puts them at their ease. European institutions are well aware of this fact. The Ecole de Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) in Paris, for instance, requires facility in three languages (two European) of all its graduates, French and international, and the ERASMUS (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) program of the European Community encourages students from its member states to spend time studying in another language and culture. In the same spirit, eleven of the most prestigious educational institutions in Europe (among them the London School of Economics, the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Catholic University of Louvain, Cologne University, the Copenhagen Business School, and the HEC) have combined in the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) “to define a common body of European knowledge in the fields of Economics and Management” leading to a common European degree at the master's level (CEMS 4+). It is anticipated that institutions from non-EC and East European countries will be admitted to the CEMS in the years to come. For the four- to five-year degree, students will be expected to spend some of their time in an immersion experience in another European country. At the HEC, this requirement takes the form of six months spent partly in study at a member institution in another country and partly in an internship in a European enterprise in that country. The aim of the CEMS program is to develop managers for “a single European market and an increasingly competitive commercial world” who are “able to understand and adapt to foreign cultures, capable of operating in several languages, and possessing an awareness of European and worldwide working methods and practices” (CEMS 4).
In the United States, the Department of Education took action in 1993 by funding centers for international business education and research (CIBER), whose charters commit them to address, among other issues, the concern that “many Americans in business often lack the ability to communicate effectively in a foreign language in a business setting, and therefore are at a disadvantage in conducting international business,” in the words of the newsletter from the CIBER at Duke University. Foreign language departments should seize the opportunity to link up with these centers.
Isn't this trend what we have been advocating for years? Why are we not more deeply involved with such projects in our own institutions? Have we done the networking that will make our colleagues across campus automatically think of us as ready and essential partners in these new developments? Who will be doing all the language teaching at the advanced level that such projects require? Part-timers who happen to knock on the door at the right moment or professionally prepared and competent language teaching and culture specialists? Do we have enough professionally trained LTCSs to be able to integrate them into this new academic approach? If not, what are we doing to prepare more and to make their conditions of employment attractive and secure? We cannot afford to fall behind. We must show our interest and demonstrate our willingness to participate in new developments that involve language wherever they manifest themselves on our campuses. It is time to wake up and catch up in a world awash with opportunities.
The author is Professor Emerita of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. The article is based on a paper presented at ADFL Seminar East, 10–12 June 1993, in Montreal, Quebec.
1 For more details on statements such as these, see Harari; National Governors' Association, Educating and America ; Bartlett; Coalition for the Advancement of Foreign Languages and International Studies; and Smith.
2 For information on the bulletins, write to the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS), 300 Eye St., NE, Suite 211, Washington DC 20002.
3 For information and research on study abroad programs, see Brecht, Davidson, and Ginsberg; Brecht and Robinson; Goodwin and Nacht, Patterns and Missing ; Burn et al.; Burn and Smuckler; Lambert, International Studies ; Weaver; and Frye and Garza.
4 Australia has a national foreign languages policy; see Lo Bianco.
5 I have described in detail seventeen possible advanced-level courses with an international perspective as well as the goal of developing advanced competence, which have already proved attractive to students (“Undergraduate Program 2” 21–33).
6 In many countries with which the United States competes, students routinely complete eight to twelve years of language study. Departments should encourage an articulated long sequence in elementary and secondary schools to precede advanced study at college.
7 For a more detailed discussion of advanced sequences of courses and placement into various levels, see Rivers, “The Undergraduate Program: Autonomy.”
8 For a discussion of reconsideration of the language program in small colleges, see Cates and Melvin. For suggestions for programs in community colleges, see Rivers, Speaking 183–90.
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© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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