Towards a new language . . . and beyond . . .

This morning I was reminded how important it is to allot time for professional discussion. Over coffee, I had an impromptu five-minute conversation with our illustrious Craig Bouma, Science department chair (You know, the guy who was on NPR ). It was very pleasant and thought provoking. After his usual reprimand regarding my reckless (bike) riding, I asked him what he thought about the future of the Foreign Language Department. Since he did not have any answer he asked me questions (what a Socratic!) : -What do you want to accomplish? Mastery or give students a taste for different things that they may pursue later in college? -What do your paying customers want? How do you balance what they want and what you know is best as a professional? -What do other department chairs recommend? (Although Craig proposed some answers, I'll leave it at that and let you chime in with your own take on it.)

An ALTA Language Services write-up of the most popular foreign languages and foreign language enrollment in U.S. schools. Click here to read it.

Preface: This is a conversation I had over the weekend that I thought was very interesting. I am not saying this is the right choice for Loyola, just sharing one school's experience. One of the many language options on the long list of "considered languages" was American Sign Language (ASL). Which I admittedly never looked at closely or seriously considered since it had received lower support in terms of all our polling, though it did get some votes. Over the weekend I had lunch with a grad school friend who teaches Spanish at a school in Irvine and of course the first thing I asked her was "What languages do you offer? and how do you decide which student gets which language?". They currently offer 3 languages: Spanish, French, ASL. ASL was a new program (within the past 3-5 years). I asked how they had come to that decision. Several years back a female student severely struggled with Spanish and ultimately failed out of the course. She had to attend communit...

I was recently in contact with Fordham Prep in New York. They have one of the most amazing language departments, offering seven different languages. After inquiring how they distribute their students across languages I found out that they require their students to take one year of Latin or Greek as freshmen and then let them free to take the language they desire. Check out their website , it is inspiring.

Most Widely Spoken Languages in Los Angeles County (US Census 2000) Spanish 4,ooo,ooo Chinese 390,000 Tagalog 196,000 Korean 165,000 Armenian 138,000 Vietnamese 72,000 Persian 68,000 Japanese 60,000 Russian 44,000 French 39,000 Arabic 37,000

I had a discussion with one of my colleagues (Eric Beuzet) the other day regarding the process we will follow to choose our new language. I am not sure if what follows is close to what he was suggesting but this is what I came away with: Could we come up with a rating system that could simplify our task and maybe render the whole process as objective as possible? For example there could be a grading system like this: 3 = important 2 = somewhat important 1 = not important. And the questions could be of the following type: 1) How important is it that the new language belongs to the less difficult languages to learn? 2) How important is it that we cater to the demand of our parents/students? 3) How important is it that we cater to the wishes of the rest of the faculty? 4) How important is it that the language be obvious on the political scene today? 5) How important is it that the new language be obvious on the economic scene today? 6) How important is it that the new lang...

In this sound bite we become fully aware of how much German has been tied to the United States since the late 1600s. After listening to this piece I feel that it is a pity and in some way a great disregard for the American heritage to have neglected the study of this wonderful language. Definitely a language of the Academia, German still belongs in a college prep school's curriculum. More than Mandarin? Arabic? Italian? Greek? Let me know . . .

Listen to the sound bite . And give us some feedback. Could our students handle this? In a three year program in High School?

As I mentioned before there could be some philosophical opposition to the inception of a Chinese program that is sponsored by the communist Chinese government. Someone may have a problem with a China sponsored program but be totally fine with the teaching of Chinese though different means. This AP article reports such a debate going on not far from here, in Hacienda Heights.

Now look who is down the street!

Norman Matloff makes a case for the study of Chinese . According to him, the interest for Chinese is not a fad. But in his article he points out the challenges that can be encountered when teaching Mandarin. That brings me to start thinking about 1) the teaching part itself (the practical, nitty gritty part of wondering of how a Chinese classroom would be like) as well as 2) the search for Chinese teachers. About 1), it seems Dr. Matloff has developed his own technological solution to teaching Mandarin. If this type of teaching were to be implemented at our school, it would go well with our emphasis on integrating technology in the classroom. However, do we want to go in the direction of the YouTube video posted with his article?? Regarding 2) it seems like the Chinese Government is going out of its way to provide teachers to the U.S. in order to promote the study of Chinese. Would we go in this direction? What is our stance on collaborating with governments that are in...

In the second piece of this New York Times article, Ingrid Pufhal points out the fact that the United States has had a utilitarian approach of teaching languages. This means that the languages learned in schools were driven by world events: during the Cold War, Russian was being pushed, two decades ago, Japanese was in the forefront of people's minds, now since China is such a great economic (and military) presence, Mandarin seems to have everyone's attention. This contrast with a very different approach of learning of languages that deviates from this superficial approach. Pufhal puts it in these words: Finally, European policy makers, educators and the general public realize that the benefits of language study extend well beyond the ability to communicate in another language. A recent E.U. meta-study presented scientific evidence that multilingualism contributes to creativity by enhancing mental flexibility, problem solving capability, language awareness, learning capacit...

The link below takes you to the chart that shows the classification of languages by degree of difficulty to learn (taken from Wikipedia .) This list was put together by the U.S. Department of State. There is no category 4 as the previous post referred to. Still, Mandarin and Arabic are in Category 3. It is also fascinating to visit the Department of State's language course offerings . A multitude of them!!

In this article the focus is on Chinese and Arabic studies. The challenges and the help that is available to implement these languages is covered in this piece. I noted that the department of state ranks languages by their level of difficulty to learn. Both Arabic and Mandarin are level 4 (the highest) languages. At a school like ours where we depend very little on previous knowledge of the language at the elementary and junior high level, is it reasonable to aim at implementing such high demand tongues?

Dave placed a copy of an article summarizing the results of a survey conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics. The section of their website that pertain to Foreign Languages has interesting information that you may want to look at. The Executive Summary of their survey has been published in a sleek brochure .

Hello foreign language lovers, amateurs, teachers, students, and the like . . . The following posts are all based on the following premise: Let's say you teach at a top notch California High School whose Foreign Language curriculum is not as top notch as can be. You offer four years of Spanish, Latin and French (including Honors and AP level classes) and your students are required to take three years of a language in order to graduate. The administration has given you free reins to implement a new language. I hope to post links to articles, research as well as report on discussions, interviews and news that pertain to this topic. I am looking for comments, opinions and any feedback that would help come to a confident decision in the implementation of a fourth language in our curriculum. Merci, Danke, Gracias, Gratias