I
RE P O R T RESUMES
ED 016 425 FL GOO 593 FOREIGN- LANGUAGE TEACHING TODAY IN THE UNITED STATES. BY- NOSTRAND, HOWARD LEE PUB DATE 1 AUG 67 EORS PRICE NF...$0.25 HC -$0.60 13P.
DESCRIPTORS-. *SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING, *CROSS CULTURAL TRAINING, *LANGUAGE RESEARCH, *EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION, *EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS, AUDIOLINGUAL METHODS,LINGUISTICS, BILINGUALISM, LANGUAGE AIDS, ARTICULATION (PROGRAM), INTEGRATED CURRICULUM, NATIONAL COMPETENCYTESTS, CULTURAL CONTEXT, LANGUAGE PROGRAMS, MODERN LANGUAGEASSOCIATION, ERIC,
(THERE ARESEVERAL NOTEWORTHY DEVELOPMENTS AND SOME UNSOLVED PROBLEMSIN FOREIGN... AND SECOND- LANGUAGE LEARNING. INTENSIFIED INTEREST IN INCREASING NUMBERS OF SPANISH.-SPEAKING INHABITANTS IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWESTIS THE MOST VISIBLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE AREA OF SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING. IN FOREIGN- LANGUAGE LEARNING, WHERE THE EMPHASIS IS ON CROSS- CULTURAL COMMUNICATION, THE AUDIO-LINGUALAPPROACH IS NOW RECOMMENDED BY NEARLY ALL LEADERS IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION. SOME OF THE NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN LINGUISTICS -- TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR AND FEATURE ANDASPECT ANALYSIS- -ARE STILL TOO THEORETICAL TO AFFECT THE TEACHINGOF GRAMMAR, BUT MANY OTHER NEW AUDIO- LINGUAL AIDSARE ALREADY IN USE. NEW LANGUAGES ARE BEING TAUGHT IN THE UNIVERSITIESAND SECONDARY SCHOOLS, STUDY SEQUENCES HAVE BEEN LENGTHENED,AND CURRICULAR COORDINATION IS HELPING TO PROMOTE CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING.. THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION,- AND OTHER GROUPS, ARE DEFINING NEW STANDARDS OF COMPETENCE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS.. RESEARCH IS GOING ON IN SUCH RELATED FIELDS AS THE PHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE LEARNING, LINGUISTICS, AND THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGES. THIS PAPER WAS DELIVERED AT THE EDUCATIONAL WRITERS° SEMINAR, WORLD CONFEDERATION OF ORGANIZATIONSOF THE TEACHING PROFESSION, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, AUGUST1, 1967. CAF/ v.
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FOREIGN-LANGUAGE TEACHINGTODAY IN THEUNITED' 3TATE3 Howard.,Les_NoAtrand 9 Professor of RomanceLanguages andLitereture, University ofWathingt9n Seattle, Washington
Educational Writers!Seminar, World Confederationof .Organizationtof the Teaching- Profession Vancouver, BritishColumbia . . .1 Augutt:)1967
The readyavailability of hefactual information on discussion, to lookat my -subjectleaves us free, inthis brief be just a few maindevelopMentt 'and-unsolved problems that may 4,:. : ofIsiternatiprial interest. .Thoroughstudies have infact- been ;'s made of -ehro4mentsin schoolisq ..:untoersittesof university and 'entranceand degree requirements, ofteacher preparation of the standardsfor..certificationv and ofthe recent history , the'coimOnIytaug -.11anguage.tejachereducation aria theteaching of material can belocated by request. languages. All such factual . the MaterialsCenter of the ling thebibliographicai'date from . , -...... 4. . the new American Modern Language kssodiation,Of America and of --..:-:::-:,-*- ,. , :;= c= ,:.,,,.,-,- r'' .. Firli," L.:00041, on theTeaching of ForeignLanguages,("ACTFL"),, '6 ',:; . 1 4..0 - ; ' . 4 ,. I*0 1 ...... r. 1 , , - , MS cz, - -=, ; :0-4 ... ,,,. . - City10011. ,--,; 5.4.... * .g,.a.. .' :-fh,lV.prite Ni ,York e. : .pol.1P.4. * . It: c... .., ... "secon&i, =cm :,,,..17tteem's useful to'in' ake the distinction between ... learning: "second" meaning 'IP= CIL a ag language" and-"foreign-language" Ilte; =co a. ., H% =e..... - ,.t i- ' -'' - learned for the purposeof communicationwith. ' , 0- -:, 430 Anne , . . , , Eig ,t; 15. ' --.F. '''-'-'-'''''-'-' Spanish is learned' byCatalonians.The one's -compatriots, . as .. , .. ,. category, i:.: .-bulk of my subjectfalls,in,,thp."foreignii.languege *-1
2 Ole
A. Second-language learnin&
There is currently an intensified interest, nonetheless, in the
increasing number of Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Southwest, from
Texas to California. The interest is evidenced by several recent conferences
on their predicament, and another conference to be held at El Paso, Texas, ri on November 11. The efforts to improve the educational opportunities
offered to these Spanish speakers drawupon the long development of methods
for teaching English to speakers of other languages.Information on this field,
and on the contrastive grammars thatare being written to facilitate the teach-
ing of English and of several other commonly taught languages,may be obtained
from the Center for Applied Linguistics01755 Mass. Avenue, Washington, D.C.
20036. One finds a growing awareness, however, that the problem of bi-lingualism
is really a bi-cultural problem, and the emphasis is accordingly shiftingfrom
programs merely of teaching English, to programs whose objective is the mutual
regard of the Anglo-Saxon and the Hispanic culture bearersin a community, to
be achieved through understanding and appreciation of each other'sheritage and
life style.
1. (continued) 1944-47 as U.S. Cultural Attac1-4 in Peru. He has received the Peruvian Government decoration, Order of the Sun, ;and also the French Government Palmes Academiques and Legion d'Honneur.He was a member of the steering committee for the Modern Language Association's Foreign Language Program, 1952 -58, and of the Advisory Committee for NDEA Title VII (the Educational Media Program): 1958-60. He was director of one of the first NDEA Institutes in 1959, and was President of the American Associa- tion of Teachers of French, 1960-62. He has directed several research projects for the U.S. Office of Education. In 1966-67 he served as chairman of the National Education Association's National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards. His publications include Le Th6gtre antique (1934), Ortega y Gasset's Mission of the University (1944)-1966)0 The CUltural Attache (1947), Researchon Language Teachi ...Biblio raph" 0962, 1965), Background Data for the Teaching of Frenc .3.
The same spirit of mutualityinforms the language-education aspect of the war on poverty inthe "inner-city" areas. As we work with the underprivileged we grow moreand more aware that their subculture has some admirablequalities, such as the highly developed skill of readingcharacter. We see our task here as one of extending theculture":of,the, individual, and virtually teaching him a secondlanguage, but always as s modi-
fication rather than asupplanting of,w4at he already:ppssesses.
All of the main presentdevelopments in our teaching of
foreign languages have beenaused, at least in large part,
by concern for the need tocommunicate with other peoplesin
their languages..The motive underlying this concern is some
mixture of self-interest grown more enlightenedthrough
spreading education and abroadening internationalexperience --
curiosity about "strange lands andfriendly faces," and the
hope that closer acquaintancewill result in cooperationand
mutual enjoyment. The observer coming from a morepessimistic
and suspicious culture findsit hard to imagine the hopefulness
andMendliness that this national populationexhibits and takes
for granted. 1A...1431.AW11:21M211=920 The first changeto develop out of the new stress on cross-
cultural communication wasthe gradual adoption,beginning in
the 19401s, of anaudio-lingual beginning in the teachingof
languages. This procedure is now recommendedby nearly all the 4 1111°' ..a_.
national leaders in the profession, it is the intent of
nearly all the teaching materials that are being published, and
methods courses being taught, and it hss by now been accepted,
apparently, by a large majority even of the older teachers who
themselves learned their foreign language by discussing it in
English.
The audios- lingual approach needed a grammar based on the
spoken language, while the grammars used for teaching until
then described languages partly in terms'of spelling and partly
in terms of pronunciation. Structural linguistics went a long
way toward meeting this need. At present, however, a wide gap
separates the changing theory of language analysis from the
application of linguistics to teaching. The most promising
advances toward an enlightening descriptive knowledge -- trans-
formational grammar and its refinements called feature analysis
and aspect analysis-- arein a state too unsettled and at too
early stage for any routine application. The theoretical
linguists are occupied in testing and comparing the alterna-
tive refinements proposed by the fertile mind of Noma ChomSkyl
and until they resolve the open issues at the speculative level
they cannot reasonably be expected to answer the requests for
help at the level of applied linguistics. Meanwhile, however,
the "applied linguists" may possibly contribute both to theory
. and to practice by taking the portion of a language's syntax
at must be taught, arranging this corpus on themodel (for
example) of feature analysisland testing whether the model achieves a new economy of description, explanatory power, compre
hensOility, and pedagogical efficiency* (This is being attempted
at my university.) 131"&ASE411MC01 The audio-lingual approaCh has generated needs not only for
a new grammar but also for word-frequency and syntax counts based
on'the conversational language, audiovisual teaching materials
and equipment, and tests of proficiency in auditory coMprehen-
sion and in the spoken language. These instruments are being developed rather rapidlyi partly-in tike, %died States and part- lyin Europe, for.the_severel languages most commonly taught in the West; such ;progress cannot be claimed With'respect to the many other languages that ought to be 'taught in the United States. liAInaaltiliam=MatAtamcamta A seCond clear consequence of the emphasis on cross-cul- tural communication, in addition to the audio-lingual approach and its repercussions, is the diversification of the languages taught. The old high-school offering of Latin, French, Spanish,
Gorman and Italian, with occasionalsequences in e.g. Hebrew,
_ . Polidh and the Scandinavian languages in response to requests of Imopl ethnic groUps, obviously does not suffice if representa- tives ;of the population are to establish communication with the other peoples of the globe. Among the languages recently added
secondary schools are of course Russian and .ortugese, and
ificant beginning to reach beyond the West:' Japanese, 14andar
0. A much wider variety of languages is Ofcourse tau
e universities. Latin, which until the 1940's was t -6-
foreign language of highest enrollmentin the schools of large
I , I areas of the country, hasdeclined sharply in popularity desplte
cogent pleas, unprecedentedly 'attractiveteaching materials,
and the demonstration by a few Latinists that an ancientlanguPge
can be so taught as to beread as a natural language, rather than
as 6 puzzle of writtensignals. The reason for ,the decline is
partly the shift of emphasis to world communicationand the
abandonment of the belief that certain subjects werespecific
remedies for mental indiscipline. Yet the decline has been off-
set in the schools where teachers have exploitedthe audio-lingual
materials and the inherent opportunity to show atime-perspective
on presentcivilisation. It is one of our unsolved problems to benefit more fully, as a people, from the study ofLatin and
also of classical Greek, whose first-rate literature, as a
Unesco publication has observed, provides not only aperspective
in time but also a certain link of seminal ideasbetween con-
temporary cultures of the East and West.
3 ._ . 41.10012AtAOLIantutleiattaty, While the number of languages taught isrising, both in
schools and in higher education, language teachers areurging - with imcreasing, success that each studentcontinue learning one ,,, language to the point of fluency. The old custom of studying A'
A language for only two school years, which ,hasbeen a 0001400:
,,-10.0*sp in our national education, is clearly'tnerreptuol for
the oNective of communication betweenpeoples. The len 04 O
Or foreign-language sequences,therefore, is to beliste third main result of the emphasis. oncommunication.
The ideal is that each child shoild start a _first foreign
language early and learn it insuch a Way that in later life
he will be able, withjustified'self-confidence, to teach him-
self any language he may need. Actually, we hoe. failed thus
far to give most of our childrenthe advanUget of 'PIES (foreign
languages in the elementaryschool). Most* them do not begin
= a language untilsecondary-school age whenthe dhildhood capacity
to imitate speech has deterioratedneurologically and the ado-
lescent inhibition against speechsounds strangelo the peer
group is at itsstrongest. Our problem is to prepos P1ES
teachers and to persuade schooladministrators (educatelparents
are readilypersuaded) that a foreign language effectioly
serves Oa= developmentof the individual and of modern sotlety.
4. eu r lar rdi atinadtecltural
IP language study is to be carried on in sufficientdellWi
to serve these endsappreciably, the lengthening of language
p'eqpfnces is not enough. Language teachers Li the United Statet
are new comingto realiie that we must alsorelate the language
sequence to the other sequences in the schoolcurriculum, notably spcnrpOlind history, the social studies as they deal with4:7.
tore patterns and social structure at home andabioad, English
orolangUage arts") in which concepts of language ahelysis
,--assimilate4 and the other arts, already studiedin a world pei
speetive. ,Let me call these relationships withothersubjeCt,s.
"liorizontel coordination," and let mesubsume this coordtnti .8. ?Z.
under a broader interest,the socioculturalcontext of the
foreign language, acurrently spreadinginterest which
believe is a fourthmain consequence ofthe concern for
cross-cultural communication.
As our perceptionof that objectivedeepens, we inevitably involves come to realizethat the success ofthe communication
more than a"message" in flight: it involves theergo.
conceives and encodes,the messageandithe.p0-00.14 dee Understanaling of the sender and interprets itaccording to his the fabric -- orwho misinterprets it asif it belonged to
of his0Wricuitiite. As the new mediamake practicable a of life, we must vivid, vicariousexperience of a remote way vividly put with theexperience a knowledgeof the patterns so illustrated so that thelearner gains all he canof the under-
standing, the sensitivefeeling for a people'sstyle of life,
which now takes much of.alifetime to ocqUire. The State of
North Carolina, in newguidelines being preparedby French and
Slionish teachers underthe Department ofPublic Instruction, definition of the is spearheading afresh advance toward sociocultural objective foreach phase of thetoreign-language
sequence, togetherwith ideas for coordinationwith the culture and learner's developingcomprehension of his home
social system. ILToglanglloalLmatmkeLmatma. The-objectives of fluencyand understanding,with the
resulting longer sequences,have posed newproblems in the 9.
United States, with regard tothe proficiency bothof
students and of teachers.
The Modern Language Associationof America hat este-.
lyzed progress towarddefining standards ofteacher competence,
first by obtainingwide agreement on a statementof subject-
matter qualifications,then bpi. devising Testsfor Advanced., working out guide- Students and eaellevP, andmost recently
linet=iOr'4anguago teacher' -edUcatI.On-andcertification, in
cooperation with theNational Association of StateDirectors with. of Teacher-E4U,ation and..dertification OUSDTEC) and
participantsimona.46nwide ,series of regional conferences.
The outcome has beensUrmiarized by F. Andr4 Paquetteand others Inthelto, *01.-50(6, October) 1966,
pages 323.44,25.', TheiD41institutes for language teachers have
further advancedboth the definition end theachievement of
teacher competence. tbmparabie-progiett remaihs to be made,however, in de- learner should be expected to be 114144:010t thelOngitage- :A6.4.sq- Opable of es he completeseach cycle in theforeign-langUnge A and frustrated geVienceoMeanwhile, students are penalized by:Oie poor articulation betweencycles, as'theymove from
*410:04001 system toanother or fromsecondary to higher edu- with 40tiOn. humber of studentsaffected isincreasing the riOnglanguage enrollments and theincreasing mobility of 6Milie from one locality to another. V
The United Jtates has moredifficulty then most countries
in resolving problems ofnationwide coordination, notonly
because of the size of thecountry but particularlybecause
of our decentralizedcontrol over education. We gain so much,
in fact, through localinitiative and sense ofresponsibility
than we prefer to progressby the slow device ofmutual persuasion.
rather than to establish aministry of educationwhich could
decree uniformity overnight,but at the expense ofthe precious
commitment now felt by thelocal school boards andschool per-
sonnel, the parent - teacherorganizations, the professional or-
gsnizations of teachers andsdministrators)and many service-
minded publishers ofteaching materials and designersof edu-
cational equipment. All these groups now takethe sort of pride thatfree
artisans take in their ownhandiwork.Our task of achieving
continuity in language learningis now more feasible than
ever before,however, thanks to a congeriesof developments
created by the realizationthat language learning mustbe
carried to the point offluency end cross-culturalunderstanding.
First, the Modern LanguageAssociations of America,,beginning
with its Foreign LanguageProgram in 1952, has stimulatedthe
achievement of a basic consensus onpolicy among modern-
language teachers. Second, supervisors offoreign languages,
who can catalyze theneeded collective advance,have been
added to the staffs ofthe chief state schoolofficers and the
county and city schoolsystems. These supervisors haveformed organizations of their own inorder to develop and express their recommendations of policy, andmany of them have spent
summers together in special institutes financed under the so-
called National Defense Education Act °DEA) of 1958. Third,
the U.S. Office of Efteation has exerted influence, in this
and other significant ways, without assuming anything like the
centralized authority exerted by ministries of education.
Fourth, private foundations have financed research and de-
velopment.Notably, the Ford Foundation has sponsored two
statewide programs, in Indiana and Washington, following out
the initiative begun by the MLA in 19521 and the Washington
Foreign Language Program concentratesupon the problem of
defining successive levels of studentachievement -- the
basic advance without which we cennotsolve the problem of erti-
culation. Fifth, we are overcomingthe sociological separe-
tion between the national subcul e of the school personnel
and the national subculture ofthe professors and administip-
tors in our higher education. Mutual interest and cOmmunies.
Lion. between these two worls is paving the way for the mutual
persuasion through whiche must articulate the succession
of challenges present2dto the language learner as he moves
from school to colleg kulararsuLaualliztaarai A final meindevelopment, which I ascribe in its turn
to the same generating drive toward usable language competences,
.ts the concernto develop reliable research in the physiology, psycholOgyand sociology of language learning, in lingniatics, .0120.
in inetructitinal methods, materials,end. equip*Ont, in the teaching or literature, arsd inthe sociocultural..00ntext of the languages to be taught.The smargbaslage..Tpskins jajljajigiral* mentioned in thefootnote at the beginning. of this'essiiy. showed 'about halfas vans research projects
pro 1962-6es. for the entire tiiitiOd 1945661,and the new, ... research reported came largely fromthe Uhited.States, partly oui.burveywas less extsiit for ,Russian an& its ne10bor- ing.,:cOuntries.Fortunately, this bibliographizing is nos,k,:being continued with: muchmore adequate resources by to brenctses,..: of (Educational ResearchInformation Center), operated respectively by, the Modern LanguageAssociation of Ame 4cs: and4bio:::the Center for -Applied Linguistics,. A .first installtaent ortheT.1414/EctIC.serial..bibliographymill be pUblished in' FLa is of, 1967:
New and exciting possibilitiesof international coopera- tion-lie ahead, in the-desperatelyimportant task of improving linktrage instructionand strengthening its vital *contribUtion toward understanding and cooperationbetween peoples.One of tli4 possibilitiesis the sharing of information about'research and. development.Another is the establishing of whatOn, most truthfully be taught about each cultureand social structure: this can be done in thefairest perspective thttiugh theworking together ofcenters within and outside eachcountry, so. that the people's self-conceptis rounded out by thesupplementing es
views from cultures of both East, and West.Still another
possibility for cooperation is the gradual, voluntary adop-
tion of norms for teacher preparation and student achievement,
by the process of mutual persuasion, and in response to the in-
creasing mobility of families across national frontiers.
May I close this brief essay by expressing the hope, indeed
the personal expectation, that in the years immediately ahead
the Federation Internationale des Professeurs de Langues 's
Vivantes, the WCOTP, UNESCO, and all other pertinent entities,
will discover more ways of realizing our shared aspirations tan
I can even dream of today, from my still very limited view of g-
our collective potential to carry out the long-waiting hope-against-
hope which Aeschylus' chorus sang in theLigmegLzno:
att\LV 0'VOttAL V 0 VtiL14)-r1 a' 41-, V 1.4 a( L,
aTasFammmuzlowswiliiTrr: