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FOLKLORE tells us that a long, bad review is much better than a short, good one. At least length indicates attention, and attention is a measure of importance. Applying that standard to discussion of foreign language teaching indicates that we are important. We receive a lot of press in such sources as the Chronicle of Higher Education , the New York Times , and Good Housekeeping , and we produce a lot of press in our own journals. We read and write about fluctuating enrollment patterns, department closings, lack of interest in foreign languages, the inability of Americans to learn foreign languages, and (on the positive side) the role of languages in the humanities and their centrality to the liberal arts curriculum. But while there are many positive developments in the profession, they do not seem to be as interesting to the media as bad news and negative commentary. Members of our profession are among those who sound the notes of gloom the loudest.
One can only wonder how these depictions have come about. Have we painted ourselves as the victims of outside forces, playing no role in our fate, to such an extent that we have ended up victimizing ourselves? Have we really had no influence over our situation? Or have we simply put ourselves on the endangered-species list by enjoying a victim status that allows us to take no responsibility and, therefore, no blame? The answers to these questions depend on who is interrogating and in what context. This paper examines a variety of perspectives on language teaching in American universities, using these questions as subtext. It explores the internal status of the language and literature curriculum, the public's perceptions of that curriculum's status, how universities have tried to help us “solve” our problems by (in nineties-speak) restructuring us, and how we might begin to regain respect and perhaps even self-respect.
There are two distinct curricula in language departments, a language curriculum and a literature curriculum. Those curricula have their own objectives and materials and, except in some smaller institutions, their own identifiable faculties. Frankly, the most notable characteristic of the two curricula is the rhetoric of “bridging” that surrounds them. Discussions, articles, and conference presentations on the bridge course are not uncommon. How did this conceptualization come about? How did the two curricula become distinct—so distinct, in fact, that new structures had to be set in place so that students could move from one to the other?
Three critical influences have shaped the language curriculum in late-twentieth-century American education: governmental influences, global migration and immigration, and research in second language learning. But though I discuss the late twentieth century here, it is worth noting that some of these influences emerged in the nineteenth century, after the American Civil War and during the American industrial revolution (Bernhardt). And clearly the role of language during the Second World War exerted an enormous influence over instruction in the decades that followed.
Most pertinent to the discussion at hand, however, is the language of the report from the 1979 President's Commission on Language and International Studies ( Strength ). The report's extraordinarily negative wording regarding the state of language and culture instruction in the United States is disconcerting in a document whose theme is national preparedness. The commission came to represent the public's cry and the public's stake in language instruction. Indeed, since the end of the Second World War there had been little if any public interest in the profession of language teaching. Admittedly, there had been governmental concerns, as evidenced by the establishment of area studies centers and the substantial financial support for National Defense Education Act endeavors, but nothing that demonstrated the general public's interest in language instruction. The sudden focus by business and industry, in partnership with government, on language and its practical applications provided rich soil for notions of language use, of language as a tool, and of language for special purposes. This attention spawned the “proficiency movement”: that is, the conversation about what students can actually do with the language. Despite all the internal political clamor about what proficiency is or is not, the stress on doing left an indelible mark, if not on language programs, then certainly on what the public believes language programs ought to be about.
The second strand of influence on the language curriculum in the late twentieth century involves the tremendous influx of refugees and guest workers in the West and the public's response to it. These groups, because of their economic desperation, needed to acquire language skills quickly. They did not have time for the luxury of taking two years of academically oriented language instruction that might become practical at some later date, and Western nations could not afford the luxury of supplying such instruction. The traditional, humanities-based, Latinate model of learning forms and structures for use at some other stage was simply cast aside. And intriguingly, it became clear that questioning the old assumptions about how languages were learned was productive. There were clearly some advantages to alternative perspectives.
A third and final influence on the beginning language sequence is and was the exploding field of second language acquisition. One would usually expect a field to apply theory and research to practical uses. Interestingly, though, many of the findings of second language acquisition were difficult to reconcile, in particular the concept of language development. Data indicated (as intuition would have if we had paid attention to it) that second language development does not proceed in the linear fashion reflected in the forms that were traditionally taught: curricular expectations were at odds with psycholinguistic realities. If language programs did not accept these realities, they were outmoded technically; if they did accept the findings, however, they were branded as having lowered their standards by sacrificing grammar, the ultimate quality measure.
Given this array of forces emanating from the public at large, the language curriculum, refocusing on practicality and useful language functions, began on a trajectory that would take it farther and farther away from the other part of the curriculum that was still in place—the literary curriculum. We see today a public curriculum that emphasizes everyday use—teaching about halogen lamps and computers and about whether there are salad bars in Germany, yogurt stands in France, and talk shows in Spain—a curriculum rooted in immediacy and popular culture that enables learners to get off the plane and do something. We also see a public curriculum ostensibly focused on a broader audience—not only in the politically correct sense of “language for everyone” but also in the sense of providing language skills for students who may not wish to study language for a lifetime.
This discussion of outside forces affecting the language curriculum is not meant to imply that those who toil in the lower-level curriculum are unified in their perspectives. They are not, except perhaps at some public level; case by case, attitudes are much more disparate. There are still instructors in the lower-level curriculum who wonder, “Do the students really know the dative case?” and believe, “Russian is for majors. We need to make sure that they know correct grammar. They do not need to speak Russian because the upper-level classes don't require that.” These instructors believe that students are not being prepared adequately for the literary track and are, therefore, being told, albeit subtly, to go away: “We have failed you. We didn't teach you the adjective endings properly, and, therefore, you cannot go on.” This attitude is corollary to that of the true believers in the “functional” curriculum—that is, those who believe students have nowhere to go after the “conversation course” because there is little of practical value in the upper-level literature curriculum: “We have failed you. We have provided you with functional language skills, but the rest of the curriculum cannot. Go away.” Hence, the theme of the trap returns—the upper-level curricula are trapped because they have lost their feeder programs, often to forces within their own departments.
Both attitudes are incredibly destructive to language programs. To a certain extent the very authentic materials that provide students the keys to the culture have been removed from the language curriculum. Hence, in some sense, we have begun to deny students precisely what we claim to want to give them: the analytic skills through which they can use and understand culture in a more sophisticated way. Indeed, there are language teachers who see so little purpose in the upper-level curriculum that they have become key figures in its demise.
The literature curriculum (perhaps more accurately called the poetry curriculum) is thousands of years old. One of its purposes (as the Greeks envisioned it) was to enable a sophisticated analysis of language structures and rhetorical patterns. In its original sense, then, it was the upper-level language curriculum intended to enhance language skills. Somewhere along the way, however, the literature curriculum started servicing itself rather than students' language skills—it began to hide in the woods. In other words, it has never had to be responsive to any public other than itself. In contrast to the language curriculum, which has endured intense public scrutiny for more than twenty years, the literature curriculum has been able to muddle through, unchanging and aloof, self-assured.
Surveys addressing the question What is the purpose of the literature curriculum? yield a variety of answers that are uncertain and far more nebulous than are the responses to surveys about the purpose of the language curriculum (Davis, Carbon-Gorell, Kline, and Hsieh). Students tell us the upper-level curriculum is meant to help them use the language better. Even when they talk about literature, they say that they like what they read and want to know what happened in the stories. These answers might reflect the workings of the twenty-year-old mind, but what is university teaching if not working with twenty year olds? When professors are asked why they teach the literature curriculum, they answer, “So that students can conduct research.” In other words, we study Thomas Mann so that we can research Thomas Mann. This goal might be referred to as text preservation. Other professors argue that the curriculum teaches students about the culture and demonstrates the best that the culture has to offer. The answer that, for example, students study French literature so that they might improve their knowledge of the French language and thus continue to use French is a rarity.
The trap that these answers lead to is a questioning of the project of foreign literature departments. Do students really need to read the material in a foreign language? Why not establish large comparative literature departments, where students can read all the material in their native language? As universities meet increasingly severe economic crises, isn't it terribly luxurious to have specialists in all the centuries and genres when we could meet the same objectives through instruction in English?
The internal workings of language curricula and literature curricula in the United States are out of sync with each other; better said, they continue to function, but they wear each other down. The external societal pressures on language programs are enormous. And they are accompanied by unreasonable demands on language teachers, who must accept low status, higher course loads, lower salaries, and often part-time employment. It is not unusual for the language curriculum to generate ninety percent of a department's enrollment but to receive only ten percent of the department's resources. A more clearly exploitive and victimizing scenario could not exist in a modern university. And the victims—the language teachers—often become angry about the state of affairs and lose a good deal of respect for the professoriat and their mission.
But the situation that makes victims of language teachers also enables them to act as victimizers. Those who do ninety percent of the work in any system—a language department is simply one example—can control much of what occurs and can do so in relatively covert ways. Language teachers have at times exerted control by not being supportive of the upper-level program and, therefore, tacitly turning students away, leaving professors in upper-level courses with few or no students. That is, the upper level has also been victimized. Those who work in the language curriculum may feel justice has been done in the short term. But the ultimate victim is the literature curriculum when it loses the language feeder program.
As I note above, language departments are rarely the most respected departments on campus. It is not unusual for administrators in need of extra funds to target foreign language departments; one reason, of course, is that foreign language and literature professors rarely become or strive to become administrators. While they may be somewhat proud of this distinction, it potentially dooms them to a weak role within the power structure of the university, that is, to victim status. Enrollment difficulties, coupled with the tendency of the strong to avoid taking on the strong (e.g., the Chemistry department may not want conflict with the English department), make foreign language departments easy targets. Our publications, conference presentations, and the like make clear that we have accepted our victim status.
But what do the strong actually believe about us? During my year as a language center director, in which I was perceived as a newcomer not yet in the power structure and as an outsider to the literature-professor establishment, I heard others say what they believed about language and literature programs. It is important here to underline the distinction between language and literature programs and language and literature because external groups seem to distinguish the two sharply. None of the university-affiliated “outsiders” I met (from staff members in the registrar's office to librarians, engineers, and architects) spoke against the notion of knowing another language or being well-read in the belles lettres of another culture. They all said that this knowledge was important for themselves and for students. But almost as universally they believed that language and literature departments did not properly impart this knowledge. Specifically, the perceptions could be categorized as follows:
Language and literature departments are not responsive to outside constituencies.
Students in language and literature departments do not learn to use the language.
The language curriculum has low intellectual content.
The literature curriculum is in English and, therefore, useless.
The literature professors do not pull a full load, because their enrollment figures are so low.
Language and literature departments make no genuine attempt to contribute to the university as a whole.
Clearly, some of these comments may be exaggerations and some may not reflect the reality at a particular institution at a particular point in time. Frankly, though, if we are to understand our roles as victims and perhaps our willingness to accept such roles, it might be important to examine each statement for what it is and suggest some measures that might help free us from these perceptions.
Language and literature departments are not responsive to outside constituencies . What does this mean? It means we need to listen to our colleagues in other academic areas when they describe the kinds of language skills and courses they want for their students. They want useful language abilities; they do not see the wisdom in learning language only for literary analysis. They see that goal as far too narrow and expensive. Indeed responsiveness means acknowledging that language and literature departments are service departments. If language and literature departments were not service departments, they would have little left to do as American universities evolve and respond to new challenges and constituencies. Even our own job-market statistics tell us that we cannot exist just to serve ourselves. There is nowhere for faculty members or their students to go if we have no project larger or more significant than self-perpetuation.
The resulting dilemma is that many currently in language departments do not know what to do. They have no training in curriculum development and certainly no concept of teaching language for special purposes. It does, however, mean that graduate students and certainly newcomers to the job market must face the reality that language teaching is a much bigger project than their focus on traditional literary analysis has led them to believe. Certainly, the cries for responsiveness from other liberal arts college programs carry this message too. Those programs cannot survive if their faculty members have narrow perspectives.
Students in language and literature departments do not learn to use the language . In one sense this perception is relate to the first, but in another it is different. Departments still want to see linguistic accomplishment among students. But programs that hold to the illusion of a two-year language program that brings about linguistic accuracy and then leads to some sort of “real language use” will go the way of the other dinosaurs. Language and literature departments must begin to accept the reality of length of learning time; that reality entails a knowledge of second language acquisition, which tells us to expect a developmental progression in accuracy and knowledge in students. Further, language departments must begin to communicate to the rest of the university what the students can and cannot do after each level of the curriculum. Students can do a lot of things with the language that we have given them over a year or two. But they cannot do everything linguistically or conceptually that upper-level study demands. They must continue to refine their language skills; if they didn't have to do so, there would be no need for the so-called upper-level curriculum. Rather than sigh and admit that, yes, students still need a lot of work, perhaps we should matter-of-factly explain their abilities and how the program takes them through various stages of ability.
The language curriculum has low intellectual content . Indeed, the professoriat often derides the lower,level curriculum as beneath professors. The truth is that it is beneath them and their students at the intellectual level, but it is not beneath the students at the linguistic level. How can we solve this problem? Research tells us that for the most part we cannot speed up the second language acquisition process. In other words, one does need to crawl before walking, and there is no way around it. One learns to generate indicative sentences before more-complex sentences with dependent clauses. We must recognize the frustration of speaking in indicatives and thinking in dependent clauses, and we must tackle the issue. One way is to provide intellectual meat in the form of reading in English that satisfies the complex thought requirements that accompany the learning of forms. Reading in English not only reinforces the intellect but also provides students with much more significant subject matter for discussion. A question such as “How do you say ‘civil rights movement’ in X” employs the same linguistic form as “How do you say ‘Rollerblades’ in X?” but its intellectual content is radically different. New technologies make it possible to have students read about and discuss in English issues of substance regarding foreign,speaking peoples and to use some of what they learn as a basis of content in the language classroom. Colleagues outside languages respond positively to this approach because they see it as involving “college-level material.”
The literature curriculum is in English and, therefore, useless . To actually confront some of the intellectual issues mentioned above and to provide students with real material related to cultural study, some language departments have offered the option of upper-level courses in English. Indeed, this strategy has solved some enrollment problems, but it has caused additional ones. It is, of course, a quick way to produce one large comparative literature department (Berman), that is, a department that has a language specialist or two (the person or two who can read texts in the original). Colleagues in other fields see the courses as an admission that the language departments cannot fulfill their objectives—they cannot get their students to do significant intellectual work in the language. Is there any wonder that our colleagues view us with such skepticism? The solution is that the upper-level courses must be language courses too. If we need greater intellectual content in the language courses, as indicated above, we must also have greater language content in the courses that are more academically oriented (James).
The literature professors do not pull a full load, because their enrollment figures are so low . This comment goes to the heart of the financing and structure of contemporary language departments. Indeed, there is a host of arguments concerning what the intellectual project is about and what the role of the humanities is in the academy. But language and literature departments must begin to understand that what they do costs money. Every class taught and every student turned away has a real dollar cost. We cannot continue to claim the moral high road, arguing that we are in the humanities and, therefore, above money. The professors serve at the pleasure of the language curriculum and the persons who teach in it, frequently part-time and non-tenure-track staff. Numerous MLA Newsletter pieces and commentaries in sundry professional contexts reveal a myriad of lamentations on the dilemmas of these staff members. And we decry our universities for allowing such exploitation to occur. Yet, in fact, it is the professoriat that allows and needs this exploitation. Professors' livelihood and lifestyle depend on it. Professors certainly do not want to begin to be paid on a piecework basis, for surely most would starve; and they do not want to take on the real work of language departments, language teaching. But if we are to solve this deplorable set of issues, professors must reenter language teaching. Language departments should not have part-timers and other academic teaching staff with no academic standing. Universities should reward work in departments by real academic staff members. All staff members should be involved in all levels of the curriculum.
The implications here are clear. If the professors begin to accept or reaccept their rightful responsibility in the lower-level curriculum, there will inevitably be a reduction in the part-time, non-tenure-accruing staff. What other way is there to reorient language and literature teaching away from the exploitive mode that reserves the nomad track for some and the elite track for others?
Language and literature departments make no genuine attempt to contribute to the university as a whole . This perception has much to do with finances. It also touches on the concept of the service department. Indeed there was a time when the humanities were the university. The time has come to understand that now they are a part of the university. The arrogance of claiming central ground does language and literature departments great harm. Failing to be in partnership with our colleagues around campus leads to our demise.
It is important to remember that many of our colleagues may have upper-level enrollments similar to ours but bring monies into the university. In some sense, they help pay for their low enrollments. Language and literature departments generally respond that there are no outside monies that they can bring to the university. Outsiders, in turn, respond that the departments should generate support for the university through enrollments; language and literature departments, they argue, cannot have it both ways. The victim narrative really does not play well within modern universities. Given that intellectual freedom is under attack in many sectors besides the humanities, if language and literature departments pretend that they are blameless or above it all, they assign themselves to the endangered-species list.
In a fundamental sense, foreign language and literature teaching in the United States is broken, and it must be fixed. Foreign language faculties are, however, the last to know that they are broken. Historically, they were permitted to be blissfully ignorant—they were not in the power structures of the university, and universities could afford to carry sectors of the humanities that were not productive. The late 1980s, however, proved that universities could not go on as they had before. Public universities found that taxpayers were unwilling to pick up additional costs for higher education, particularly when their own children could not complete an education in four years. For private universities the budgetary situation was worse: because the institutions had no guaranteed funding except tuition dollars and endowment monies, there was little budget space left for programs that cost far more than they generated in tuition. And because government grants and contracts were also cut back, universities had nowhere to turn by and large but inward. That meant a process of finding what the university could afford to jettison without upsetting the public. Identifying and cutting vulnerable areas (ones that were not only financially vulnerable but also historically lacking in visibility and public support involved a number of phases and euphemistic phrases—total quality management, strategic planning, reorganization, restructuring.
We mostly view restructuring as an insidious way for universities to get rid of language and literature departments. Restructuring has become another synonym for downsizing , and downsizing has meant the elimination of language departments or programs, cutbacks in staff, increases in the hiring of part-timers, or the refusal to fill positions vacated through retirements. Language department members see these organizational moves as victimization, attempts to balance the books of the university at the expense of hard-working foreign language faculty members. The types of restructuring that foreign language departments have undergone include program elimination, program and department consolidation, and the establishment of language centers.
Program elimination is rather obvious. The New York Times has been full of disastrous reports over the years: the faculty dismissals at Bennington; the German department closing at the State University of New York, Albany; the potential closing of the Slavic department at Ohio State; the elimination of the PhD in German at Pittsburgh; and so forth. There is no need to rehearse any of that here. Both for financial reasons and for responsiveness to student interests, some foreign language programs that existed in good times are gone in bad.
Language programs have also been restructured through consolidation—rather than departments of German and departments of Slavic languages there are now departments of German and Slavic. Two departments collapsed into one means only one department chair to negotiate with, only one staff person, and, perhaps worst of all, only one photocopier. Irony aside, accomplishing the work of two using the staff of one unquestionably saves money. Another type of consolidation is merging all language departments into a single department of modem languages. Again, the same savings accrue to the university, and potential losses occur in the language departments: a loss of individual control, a loss of identity, and a loss of value through homogenization. A third much-talked-about pattern is dividing the language programs from the literature programs and placing all language programs under a single structure and all literature programs under a single, separate structure. This pattern effectively places all the credit-generating courses into one arena and the established salary budget lines, which are, generally speaking, relatively substantial, into another. Language teachers have often called for such a reorganization to escape the exploitive system in which the literature faculty members make all the decisions yet do not have to live with the consequences.
A final version of restructuring is the establishing of language centers, which is one of the latest trends on university campuses. In a review of language centers, J. Phillips provides a description of a variety of structures that are called by that name and notes that there is no specific and unified definition of the term. It seems clear that in the abstract all language centers are structures that are designed to accommodate the common concerns, tasks, and challenges met by all language departments regardless of size or language.
These restructuring moves are read as yet more victimizing behavior on the part of some Machiavellian, Mephistophelian, and monolingual administrator who enjoys torturing foreign language faculty members. They are never read as attempts by the university to save as much of the foreign language mission as possible. And the role of the “outside visiting team” that is almost inevitably called to campus before some restructuring takes place is never mentioned. Yet a discussion of these aspects of the decision is critical. In fact, each is consistent with the victim image as well as the victimizer image.
Except for program elimination, all forms of restructuring result in the creation of larger organizational units for language departments and programs. Indeed, faculty members often fear homogenization when Spanish departments and French departments have to merge into Romance language departments or when German and Slavic departments have to merge into Central and Eastern European departments. The reality is, however, that small departments are expensive, inefficient, and unable to confront or combat the demands of English, history, or chemistry Goliaths. Trying to wage such a fight is a fool's mission in the contemporary university. At least collectively housed language programs can have greater voting strength within university councils and senates and therefore a higher potential for influence. They also have a greater ability to hide. Small and underenrolled programs can benefit from the increase in the average student enrollment that larger programs provide; weak programs with mediocre teaching evaluations can also be more easily camouflaged within a large group than alone.
Language centers have a parallel advantage. They can be clearinghouses of information on language teaching. The one-point-of-contact approach enables persons throughout the university to receive prompt answers to questions such as which languages are taught when and how to collaborate across departments. There is nothing more annoying than being forced to make seven telephone calls to seven different departments when one telephone call could have been sufficient. Language centers also generally empower language departments by eliminating the intermediary of the dean's office. When language centers can facilitate the budgeting process, course scheduling, and professional development for TAs and other teaching staff and can consolidate grant-seeking activities under the leadership of a person trained in language issues, the language faculty can remain in control of language and literature teaching. Joint representation and advocacy for languages can be rewarding for all the language departments. A person responsible for and responsive to all language departments can make a reasoned argument about course size, course load, and definitions of teaching that is more credible than an argument based on a single department's self-interest. Further, a center may be able to cure some of the discrepancies and inequities found in language departments. Why should TAs or lecturers in one department have to teach twice as many students for the same compensation as those in other departments simply because their chair was not an effective advocate, did not care about the language program, or had alienated a dean? Hence a version of this narrative is that restructuring is not a saga of exploitation but one of empowerment.
A final point about restructuring is in order. Universities do not often make dramatic decisions without consulting with experts in the field. Often language departments recommend colleagues for review teams, and, of course, some negotiation occurs between departments and dean's offices. Without rehearsing all the behind-the-scenes intrigue, suffice it to say that foreign language departments have some input into who will review them.
What the review team does is critical. If it finds a weak set of programs and recommends accordingly, it may alienate many colleagues. If it finds a good program and reports accordingly, it may lose an enormous store of credibility with the university that is asking for its guidance. If it finds a weak program but describes the program as strong out of loyalty to languages and the humanities, it loses credibility locally and nationally, makes administrators skeptical of everything departments do (even the good things), and, perhaps worst of all, supports undeserving language and literature endeavors. Members of outside committees usually care about language and literature teaching and often want to support it at all costs. But many of the claims about the quality of teaching, about the quality of programs, and about financing that one finds in the committee reports are simply untenable, given the amount of time these teams are on campus and the type of documentation that they are able to use. The caution here is about writing reports for other institutions or accepting and interpreting reports on our institutions. Making supportive claims about how important language teaching is without solid documentation about the lay of the land at a particular institution can be extremely intrusive and can prevent needed solutions.
We and our colleagues have input into the images of us that others construct. These images are not automatically imposed. When we are not honest about the quality of our work and accept no responsibility for having made it the way it is, we opt again for the easy way out—playing the role of victim.
Systemic change is critical in our profession. But that change should only come from within our midst. Is the moral purpose of the two curricula just to perpetuate each other? Don't we have to be mindful of what students take away from the 150 hours they spend in our classes? Given the amount of resources devoted to literature, don't we need to have some purpose other than serving ourselves? We have to restructure ourselves as one group rather than as a set of individual expertises. There should be no such thing as “the language faculty” and “the literature faculty.” Eliminating the dichotomy clearly mandates changes on both sides. We have all attended meetings in which the literature faculty members are told they do not know what they are doing in language teaching and to stay away from it. We have also attended meetings in which the language faculty members are told that they have higher teaching loads because they are only doing language teaching. There is no moral high ground here. Both perspectives are doing us in: they deny undergraduates contact with precisely the scholars who are best at cultural interpretation. Those scholars must reconsider their positions and become willing to accommodate the early undergraduate thought patterns and conceptual level. And for language teaching—well, keeping undergraduate courses oriented toward popular culture and little more denigrates the intellectual mission and ultimately will continue to marginalize exactly what we have tried to protect.
How do we plan for the future? We need to get honest about our project and understand that we serve students first and that we eventually get to our academic research endeavors through this service. This is not an argument to jettison research agendas in favor of teaching. It is, however, an argument for those who have research agendas to reengage themselves with the principal clientele—early undergraduate learners—and to communicate their agendas to that audience.
Systemic change requires a conceptual reorientation in the profession—one no longer walks into a language classroom, does a forced march from the present tense to the subjunctive of reported speech, and then calls it a day as one did in the days of longer language requirements and more passive students. At the same time, our departments must not lose the substance of what the intellectual project was originally about. It was never just about learning to order coffee in France—one can go to Berlitz to learn that. It was about developing a relation to the thought of other cultures. It is foolhardy to believe that the development of that relation can begin after language instruction does. It too must begin at the beginning, and a two-tiered system will never bring that about.
Our calamity forces us, if we heed it, to reinvent ourselves—to rewire the infrastructure—and to return to what is essential for our programs' strength: putting scholars back where they belong, in front of engaged undergraduate students. The overt victim narrative has become far too convenient a mode of communication with outsiders; the covert victimizing narrative has only served to weaken us, and it may destroy us.
The author is Director of the Language Center and Professor of German Studies at Stanford Univ. This article is based on her Presentation at the 1996 MLA convention in Washington, DC.
Berman, Russell. “Reform and Continuity: Graduate Education toward a Foreign Cultural Literacy.” ADFL Bulletin 27.3 (1996): 40–46. [Show Article]
Bernhardt, Elizabeth B. “Sociohistorical Perspectives on Language Teaching in Modern America.” Learning Foreign and Second Languages: Perspectives in Research and Scholarship . Ed. Heidi Byrnes. New York: MLA, forthcoming.
Davis, James, Lynn Carbon-Gorell, Rebecca Kline, and Gloria Hsieh. “Readers and Foreign Languages: A Survey of Undergraduate Attitudes toward the Study of Literature.” Modern Language Journal 73 (1992): 320–32.
James, Dorothy. “Re-shaping the ‘College-Level’ Curriculum: Problems and Possibilities.” Shaping the Future: Challenges and Opportunities . Ed. Helen S. Lepke. Middlebury: Northeast Conf. Repts., 1989. 79–110.
Phillips, J. “Language Centers: Models and Caveats.” Teaching Languages in Context . Ed. Wilga M. Rivers. Lincolnwood: Natl. Textbook, 1990. 351–69.
Strength through Wisdom: A Report to the President from the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, November 1979 . Washington: GPO, 1979.
© 1997 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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