Making the Languages Department Indispensable to the University Community

Foster, David William

doi:10.1632/adfl.30.2.19

Cited by 2 publications

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“…As professionally-minded undergraduates at the nation's top universities jockey for places in the most exclusive graduate programs and industries, Spanish has come to be seen as just one more resource an aspiring doctor or business person can marshal to assert his/her superiority over other potential candidates. Enrolments in Spanish departments across the U. S. are booming (Alonso 2000;Brod and Welles 2000), and traditional literature-based curricula are giving way to more diverse, and in some cases, more professionallyoriented language programs (e. g., Foster 1999;Pietralunga 2000;Sinnigen 2000). Indeed, some colleges and universities have even begun to offer advanced degrees which combine the study of Spanish with courses in intercultural communication or another content area.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace

Pomerantz¹

2006

Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication

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As technological advances, trade initiatives, and the formation of political and corporate alliances contribute to the spread of globalization, language has become not only a marker of national or ethnic identity but also a form of economic and social capital (Heller 1999). Within the United States, this shift is being felt at some of the nation's most prestigious universities as an increasingly pragmatic student body clamors for courses in languages-other-than-English in an effort to accumulate the linguistic resources necessary for participation in a multilingual marketplace. This paper examines how language ideologies might function to construct expertise in Spanish as a resource for the professional advancement of middleand upper-middle class foreign language learners, while simultaneously casting it as a detriment to the social mobility of heritage language users (i. e., U. S. Latinos). In so doing, it describes how ideologies of Spanish as a foreign language get produced, circulated, and appropriated in the dayto-day workings of a Spanish language program at a prestigious U. S. university to support and foster this asymmetry. Weaving together both diachronic and synchronic approaches to research on language ideologies, it investigates how foreign language learners draw on certain ideologies to construct themselves as competent and legitimate users of Spanish, despite gaps in their linguistic repertoires and limited membership in Spanishspeaking communities of practice.

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confidence: 99%

Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace

Pomerantz¹

2006

Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication

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“…Lariviere (2002) suggests that the scholarly pursuits of the literature department claim the majority of the resources "in terms of hiring, resource allocation, and the like," leaving the language program adrift and in constant need of attention and funding (p. 246). Others (Bernhardt, 1997;and Foster, 1999) agree with this overall assessment of a bias toward literature in language programs. Bernhardt (1997) (Christian, 2005).…”

Section: Foreign Language Education -Historymentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Within this overall decline of foreign languages, the data presented in Table 2 either French or German (Welles, 2004). Welles (2004) The second trend apparent in Welles' (2004) (Bernhardt, 1997;Foster, 1999;Gay-Crosier, 1987;and Hines, 2003).…”

Section: Foreign Language Education -Historymentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Compounding the problem created by a lack of unity within the departments is the longstanding belief that literature is the most important of all subjects taught in foreign language departments (Davis, Gorell, Kline, & Hsieh, 1992;Foster, 1999).…”

Section: Foreign Language Education -Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nichols (2000) suggests that in the face of mounting uncertainty about the nature of language programs, administrators remained mired in outdated notions of the role of foreign languages in the academic community and are therefore slow to pursue changes that might make language learning a more viable element of the higher education curriculum. Others (Foster, 1999;Swaffar, 1999;and Bernhardt, 1997) In the early years of the discussion over the value and role of foreign language education in higher learning as well as society at large, Lantolf and Sunderman (2001) suggest that defenders of the language curriculum rested their case on mental disciplinarian notions that language study helps sharpened mental abilities. Examples of this defense can be seen in Purin's (1920) claim that a systematic study of language assists in the development of "close and orderly thought" while also promoting a more sophisticated "understanding of our mother tongue" (p. 326).…”

Section: Foreign Language Education -Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Faculty perceptions of the role of foreign language education at West Virginia University

White¹

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Foreign language education has a long history within higher education. However, since the late 1960s, foreign language enrollment, measured by percentages of students taking language courses, has declined by almost 50% in American colleges and universities. The author contends that much of this decline can be explained by three concomitant forces; including (1) the rise of professional programs that are constrained by an exactness of education that precludes study beyond rather narrowly defined plans of study; (2) the lack of language learning success that foreign language students demonstrate upon completion of language programs; and (3) the failure of language departments to extend the concept of language and culture learning beyond traditional language-for-literature based curricula. When coupled with societal forces that view language learning as an essential tool in the nation's economic/political battles and intra-university notions of accountability that view a department's centrality to the university based on its ability to generate revenue, foreign language departments face internal and external challenges to their long-term survival. The author believes that an in depth understanding of the perspectives of others within higher education can assist foreign language programs recover their own place within universities and establish strategic cross-disciplinary alliances that will secure the long-term success of foreign language programs. The present study, based on the theoretical frameworks provided by Bandura's socio-cognitive theory and Bourdieu's models of Field and Habitus, uses qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and document analysis, to explore the perspectives of faculty from three academic colleges (Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Business) toward the role and purpose of foreign language education within the context of the university. Finally, the author suggests that the findings of the study point to the need to develop an ecology of foreign language learning that allows for a reconceptualization of the modern foreign language department in higher education.

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Making the Languages Department Indispensable to the University Community

Cited by 2 publications

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Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace

Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace

Faculty perceptions of the role of foreign language education at West Virginia University

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