chronicle

[Peter Merrill]

Pardon the intrusion into the discussion of the state of FL teaching
in (North) American colleges and universities, but as a high school
teacher I feel compelled to point out that there is academic life
before the ivoried halls (as K. Efimenko also points out). In my
experience there is very little inclination among college teachers to
reach across that line. The poor results we seen in American FL
education probably have less to do with the quality of post-secondary
programs than with what goes on from K to 8 and 12. Whether or not
Europeans are as proficient with second and third languages as their
reputations would have it, it surely has relatively less to do with
what goes in college and more to do with societal attitudes and the
fact that FL study is taken seriously from early education on.

As a resident of a largely glass house myself (teaching at what Dean
Worth has just referred to as "a well-endowed prep school,"
endeavoring to teach cocker spaniels and others some Russian), I am
loathe to cast stones in the direction of an aloof professoriate, but
until rank-and-file America comes to change its views about the
utility and value of FL study and comes to view it as a significant
component of education from K on, college FL programs are likely to
remain little understood and will continue to seem like relatively
effete ventures, appearing to contribute even less from a financial
"value-added" perspective than philosophy programs.

We can whine in isolation about what DM is up to (where for programs
like Drake, as a small component in the overall American education
scene, it probably is true that they can never hope to accomplish
what Europe seems to take for granted), or we can-as an entire
profession-along with other AAT's, AAASS, MLA... pull together,
perhaps in the way that the music field has done, to help Americans
understand the value of early and significant training in FL
education. The cause-and-effect claims are a bit dicey, but surely
the evidence corellating relatively higher SAT scores and significant
FL study might be a part of such a campaign-a campaign including even
sound-bite aggressiveness to infiltrate the consciousness of Middle
America.
Peter Merrill

>At 10:31 -0500 07/03/01, J. Douglas Clayton wrote:
>>
>>I sense that my students, even if they have had only one semester of
>>Russian and are not able to converse freely in the language, still
>>have had a valuable educative experience. Surely that is what we as
>>educators should be telling our deans and administrators.
>>---
>>J. Douglas CLAYTON
>
>This is one way to respond to the allegation of ineffectiveness in
>language teaching--point out that something other than language
>ability can be a worthy goal. But what would be wrong with simply
>making the language teaching more effective? Douglas' approach here
>has the advantage of leaving current, allegedly ineffective, teaching
>practices intact, which may save a lot of  money and labour. Do
>others agree that the development of communicative competence can be
>relegated to other means, such as immersion or Berlitz schools, and
>university language departments can be left to providing "valuable
>educational experiences" as an adequate alternative to effective
>language teaching? Or is the assumption that effective language
>teaching as such is simply impossible in North American universities
>(which seems to be implied by David Maxwell's decision--or is his
>negative assessment of university language teaching simply wrong?)?
>
>Greg Thomson
>
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--
Peter Merrill
Phillips Academy
Andover, MA 01810

pmerrill at andover.edu

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