Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slart-l
Date:         Tue, 6 Oct 1992 12:34:55 CDT
Comments:     Resent-From: "Fred Davidson, DEIL,
              UIUC" <DAVIDSON@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>
Comments:     Originally-From: Patricia Kuntz <72360.3370@CompuServe.COM>
From:         "Fred Davidson, DEIL, UIUC" <DAVIDSON@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Anonymous query

[from Patricia Kuntz, 72360.3370@compuserve.com.  Forwarded
by Fred Davidson, SLART-L Mgr.]
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Fred Davidson/friend:
Careers in second language acquisition for "less-commonly taught
languages" in the US or "truly 'foreign' languages as opposed to
English as taught in the US --

Several issues occur to me as I read your list of questions.
1.	Less commonly taught languages (truly foreign languages) are
increasing in demand not only at the K-12 level but also at the
post-secondary levels.
	a.	Recent education legislation is targeting specific
Asian/African/European languages (Arabic; Chinese, Japanese, Russian,
& Korean).  Consequently, states are scrambling for trained teachers of
the above languages.

Because of the lack of US trained language teachers, school districts
are forced to recruit "first/native" language speakers (in the case of
Africa actually second, third, or fourth language speakers without
pedagogical training) to assume the position of language instructor.
Case in point is documented in articles published in both major
newspapers and the Chronicle of Higher Education concerning the
difficulties involved in hiring "first/native" language speakers at
major research universities.

ACTFL (Jamie Draper) just completed an extensive
study on the impact of the Foreign Language Assistants Act 1988 which
is only now being implemented.  For additional information, contact:
Joint National Committee for Languages,  300 I St., NE Suite 211,
Washington, DC  20002  (202)  546-7855  FAX: (202)  546-7859
This organization is our lobby in Congress for language-related bills.
	b.	Major organizations are fighting over the few trained
pedagogues of "less-commonly taught languages."  Funding for the 3 + 1
National Foreign Language Research Centers (Hawaii, San Diego State,
Georgetown/CAL) are focused on these languages.  Furthermore,
statistics show that Japanese is no longer a "less-commonly taught
language" depite the fact that for English speakers, it is a "truly
'foreign' language."  MLA/ACTFL statistics illustrate that Japanese is
number 4 in K-16 enrollments!  Japanese shares the position with
Italian and Russian following Spanish, French, and German.  Both
Russian and Japanese grew significantly (over 30%) followed by
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese from 1986-1990.  French, German, and
Latin lost enrollments.

2.	As a researcher at the National Foreign Language Center, 1619
Massachusetts Ave., NW,  Suite 400, WAshington, DC  20036  (202)
667-8100; I am becoming increasingly familiar with the federal
grants.  Today, I contacted Bruce Ginn (National Security Agency)
(301) 688-7592 concerning to grants for "less-commonly taught
languages."  One grant seeks textbooks and the other, grammar
references for 10 Asian, African, and Eastern European languages.
These grants are designated to "minority enrollment schools."
Nevertheless, one can collaborate on a project with one of these
schools.  Many major research universities are doing just that --
STanford, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Indiana, Texas, and Hawaii.

3.	The National Foreign Language Center has coordinated an
association of "Organizations of Less-Commonly Taught Languages" since
1990.  Over ten language associations participate in various projects
included survey research, case studies, and ethnographies.  You may
want to contact the President/Chairs of these associations.
	Association of Teachers of Turkish
	Chinese Language Teachers Association
	Assoc. of South Asian Language Educators
	Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute
	Consortium of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages
	National Association of Self-Instructional Language Programs
	Association of Teachers of Japanese
	National Assoc. of "Professors" of Hebrew
	African Language Teachers Assoc.
	American Association of TEachers of Arabic
	American Assoc. of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages
	American Council of Teachers of Russian

4.	You are correct that the "first" generation (1960-90)
"less-commonly taught language" instructors were linguists first and
literatists second.  Most of these instructors were compelled to
conduct research in their field to obtain tenure leaving little or no
time for the demands of language instruction and pedagogical
professional development.  Increasingly results show that both
groups lacked pedagogical training which resulted in "poorly" trained
students.
It is not uncommon for either group to teach a "less-commonly taught
language" despite the fact that they had little or no contact with the
(in country) target language group following their initial employment
or dissertation research.  Therefore, many post-secondary students
studied "less-commonly taught languages" through grammar-translation
method.  Faculty instructors had few authentic materials and knew
little about contemporary life of the target langauge speaker.  For
these instructors language was not part of culture a linguistic system
to be memorized.
When a faculty member was not familiar with a language,
"first/native" speakers were hired.  These "speakers" were used as
informants.  This system poses great challenges for language,
pedagogy, and supervision.  It is at this juncture, that research
universities funded by Title VI US DOE/CIE funds designated a linguist
in their program to be the "language coordinator."  In theory, 99
persons (one for each center) exist.  Consequently, the demand for
language teachers is great.

5.	As ethnic curriculum demands increase (Afrocentric curriculum)
in popularity, languages from that region are considered a must for the
curriculum.  This phenomenon reflects the growing number of minority
students and parents who are demanding equal coverage in the
curricula.  As an example,  Milwaukee, WI now offers an elementary and
middle school program is African perspecitives rather than a European
perspective.  Arabic and Swahili are languages of choice here and not
French, German, or even Spanish.  A list of international/magnet
schools underscore the regular offerings of Arabic, Japanese, Chinese,
Russian, Swahili, Korean, and US indigenous languages.  All these
schools require trained teachers, language supervisors, student
teachers cooperating teachers, university researchers, and university
language supervisors.  All these languages need curriculum guidelines,
assessment, supervision, articulation procedures (elementary, middle,
high, college, university), and research in instruction and
curriculum.

6.	Teacher training is critical.  Research universities having
schools of education recognize the fact that certification programs
must be developed to retrain not only university faculty, but to train
teaching assistants and informants, the K-12 teachers and pre-service
student teachers.  Only a very few research and state universities
offer such an option:
	Wisconsin - Japanese, Chinese (Arabic, Swahili pending)
	Michigan  - Arabic

7.	Mr. Davidson since you are Illinois where several Title VI
Language and Area Studies Centers are funded, I suggest that you/your
friend contact the administrators at these Centers.
	a.	African Studies, Russian & East European, Latin
American, East Asian Studies
	b.	Eyamba Bokamba, Division of English as an
International Language, your employer, is very involved in these
issues.  He is the President of the National Association of
Organizations of Less-Commonly Taught Languages.

As one of the first scholars to earn a degree in curriculum and
instruction - second langauge acquistion -- African langauges -- Arabic
and Swahili; I find this field open to innovation and creativity.

Good luck.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU