chronicle

[Meredig, John]

Dear Seelangers:

I wholeheartedly agree with Prof. Clayton's comments. President Maxwell's
assumption is that the *only* reason to study a foreign language is to
become conversationally fluent. Of course this is *one* of the goals, but if
this is what we promise our students after one or two years of study (at a
paltry 3, 4, or 5 hours of class a week), then certainly we are selling them
a bill of goods. This is just as true of the Romance languages as it is of
"harder" languages such as Russian.

In the chronicle Maxwell describes language instruction thus: "Pound out two
years of grammar, composition, and great works, and then go to Leningrad to
learn to speak like me." And my response is, yeah, and the problem is ...??
As Prof. Clayton remarks, even one semester of Russian language study has
value: if nothing else it will teach them about Russia in general and they
will learn some basic grammatical principles. For all practical purposes
American students learn no grammar whatsoever in their English classes. They
learn this stuff in their foreign language classes, and, in fact, there is a
direct correlation between years of foreign language study and *English*
verbal scores on the SAT.

In addition, I really believe that many students are *actually interested*
in grammar and philology; they *want* to know how language works, and they
are fascinated by etymological connections between various languages. Simply
learning to converse at the depth of understanding of a parrot is not what
most students are after, in my experience. In the latest issue of the
Indiana University Russian and East European Institute newsletter there is
an article by Todd Golding, a high school teacher of Russian. I was
particularly struck by Mr. Goldings comment: "Although I was a
dyed-in-the-wool communicative believer coming out of college, I now
realize, after seven years in the profession, that students have a natural
curiosity about grammar..." Spasibo ogromnoe, Mr. Golding! I have been
screaming this message at the legions of anti-grammar fanatics for years.

I suspect that administrators nation-wide who are not particularly
language-friendly will start salivating after seeing this article in the
chronicle. If we attempt to defend our departments purely on the basis of
communicative competence after a year or two of study, we are doomed. We
must focus on the many other benefits of foreign language study:
geographical, political, and cultural awareness and increased knowledge of
language (not just *a* language). Any communicative ability the students
pick up in that time is an added bonus.

John Meredig
Asst. Prof. of Russian & German
University of Evansville

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