Foreign Language requirement revisited

[Grushkin, Donald A.]

Thanks for your clarifications, Nassira,

> But instead, here are some initial, possibly
> none-too-coherent thoughts on
> the issue at hand. I'm guessing these are some of the arguments you're
> running up against at CSUS:
>
> -No other CSU has this type of foreign language requirement;
> why should we?
>
Actually, several CSU campuses do have a foreign language requirement, but
we're in the minority, so this is one of the arguments.

> -Many reputable universities (again, to use Harvard, my own
> institution, as
> an example) only require one year of foreign-language
> instruction, which can
> be waived for students who have a sufficient amount of high school L2
> background; why should we be any more demanding?

This is another argument, and at CSUS, the FL requirement is waived for
those students who have sufficient HS L2 education, and attenuated depending
on the number of years the students took FL in HS or Jr. College.


> How exactly have you responded to these points so far?  (And
> has no one
> realized the perversity of responding to students' lack of L2
> proficiency by
> *decreasing* the amount of language instruction?)

We responded to these points by discussing the L2 requirement as part of a
"classical" education, and how exposure to L2 enhances people's perceptions
of culture and language, including their own, plus the cognitive and
metalinguistic benefits of learning an L2.

Yes, it is perverse, but the problem is that we cannot make an argument for
"proficiency" since all of us (ASL and the FL Dept) have to admit that
almost none of the students achieve "proficiency" after completing the
requirement at its current levels.  Our best goal is for some level of
conversational competence (which is admittedly not fully defined)  and an
internalization of the L2 culture and its values, behaviors, etc.).

> In any case, the ex-high-school-debater in me is raring to go
> on this, but I
> think a little more detail on the content of the current
> discourse might
> help keep those of us for whom the value of more
> second-language exposure is
> self-evident from suggesting the very same arguments you've
> already made, as
> well as provide some opportunities to turn the other side's arguments
> against them.
>

It seems that they view the 3rd semester as something of a "waste" of
student time since they do not achieve "proficiency" and that 2 semesters is
"enough to learn to appreciate the other culture, etc.", and that students
bypass the requirements by taking FL at the Jr. College level or take ASL,
which some of the faculty seem to be feeling (from my impression) does not
fully meet the "foreign" requirement (despite my contentions that it is just
as "foreign" as Chinese or Sanskrit).

Does this help clarify the arguments?

--Don Grushkin
>