English Departments in non-English-speaking countries

[john]

Dear Funknetters, 

I don't know if this is the right set of people
to ask about this, but here goes. 

I teach in the Department of English
Language and Literature at the University of Haifa. There are five
linguists 

in the department and in principle six literature
specialists. We are the strongest unit in the Humanities by far in


terms of number of students, and we can even set our limits on test
scores for entrance very high so as to 

have very strong students on
the average. About 75% of our students are native speakers of Arabic,
10-15% 

are native speakers of Hebrew, and the rest are native speakers
of other languages. We don't have a single 

faculty member who knows
Arabic beyond e.g. my knowledge of which sociolinguistics variables
manifest 

which behavior. In departmental discussions, I have long
contended that this is a serious problem because in 

a
non-English-speaking country the natural topic for a seminar paper or a
thesis in an English department is 

some kind of contrastive study
between English and the students' native language, or a study of the


acquisition of English informed by a knowledge of the learners' native
language so that the effects of 

interference from this language can be
taken into consideration, and the Arabic-speaking students have no 

one
who can adequately work with them in this regard. This would be perhaps
understandable if the 

Arabic-speaking students constituted a minority
in the department as they do in Israel as a whole (being 

about 20% of
the population), but as they have been the overwhelming majority of
students in our department 

for the past 10 years and there is no sign
that this will change, the situation is completely unacceptable.


Incredibly, not a single other faculty member in my department has
ever stated that they agree with me in 

thinking that this is a serious
problem (I should say that the great majority of them are as far as I
know 

extremely left-wing in terms of the political parties that they
vote for). With three retirements coming up in the 

next two years, and
with a number of suitable candidates who are native speakers of Arabic
available, I feel as 

though the time has come to make a serious effort
to do something about this. Could any of you who are 

working in
English departments in non-English-speaking countries be persuaded to
write letters to people in my 

department and elsewhere in the
university stressing the importance to English departments in


non-English-speaking countries of having lecturers who know the native
language of the majority of students? 

At least one? 

Thanks, 

John