Exploring the U.S. Language Flagship Program: Professional Competence in a Second Language by Graduation - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1783096098 ISBN 13: 9781783096091

Casa editrice: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2016

Riassunto

A number of reports in the US have highlighted the country’s need for improved second language skills for both national security and economic competitiveness. The Language Flagship program, launched in 2002, aims to raise expectations regarding language proficiency levels at the post-secondary level and to address structural gaps in the curricula of many L2 programs. This federally funded program provides opportunities for US undergraduate students in any specialization to reach a professional level of competence in a targeted second language by graduation. This volume highlights innovative practices that enable students to achieve this goal – even those with no exposure to the second language prior to university. The book explores the rationale and history of the federal program as well as showcasing models and strategies of existing Flagship programs.

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Informazioni sugli autori

Dianna Murphy is Associate Director of the Language Institute and Russian Flagship Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests are in foreign language education at the postsecondary level, with a focus on students’ goals and perspectives on their foreign language learning.

Karen Evans-Romaine is Professor of Russian in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic and Director of the Russian Flagship Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include Russian language pedagogy and early 20th-century Russian literature, particularly intersections of music and literature.

Dianna Murphy is Associate Director of the Language Institute and Russian Flagship Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests are in foreign language education at the postsecondary level, with a focus on students' goals and perspectives on their foreign language learning. Karen Evans-Romaine is Professor of Russian in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include Russian language pedagogy and early 20th-century Russian literature, particularly intersections of music and literature.

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Exploring the US Language Flagship Program

Professional Competence in a Second Language by Graduation

By Dianna Murphy, Karen Evans-Romaine

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2017 Dianna Murphy, Karen Evans-Romaine and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-609-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Abbreviations, 
Contributors, 
Introduction Karen Evans-Romaine and Dianna Murphy, 
1 The Language Flagship: Creating Expectations and Opportunities for Professional-Level Language Learning in Undergraduate Education Michael Nugent and Robert Slater, 
2 Laying the Groundwork: Programmatic Models in US Language Flagship Programs Dianna Murphy, Karen Evans-Romaine, Valerie Anishchenkova and Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, 
3 Adding Breadth to the Undergraduate Curriculum: Flagship Approaches to Interdisciplinary Language Learning Sandra Freels, Olesya Kisselev and Anna Alsufieva, 
4 The Road Through Superior: Building Learner Independence Peter John Glanville, 
5 Maximizing Oral Proficiency Development via Telecollaborative Partnerships in the Portuguese Flagship Program Victoria Hasko, Robert Moser, Fernanda Guida, Mary Elizabeth Hayes and Viviane Klen Alves, 
6 Creating Collaborative Communities through Online Cafés Sharon Bain and Madeline K. Spring, 
7 Heritage Language Learners in Flagship Programs: Motivation, Language Proficiency and Intercultural Communicative Competence Olga Kagan and Cynthia Martin, 
8 Assessing Language Proficiency and Intercultural Development in the Overseas Immersion Context Dan E. Davidson, Nadra Garas and Maria D. Lekic, 
9 Overseas Internships in Advanced to Professional-Level Language Acquisition Samuel Eisen, 
10 Beyond Proficiency Gains: Assessing the Academic, Cultural and Professional Impact of the Flagship Experience on Alumni Mahmoud Al-Batal and Christian Glakas, 
11 Raise the Flag(ship)! Creating Hybrid Language Programs on the Flagship Model Thomas J. Garza, 
Conclusion Karen Evans-Romaine and Dianna Murphy, 
Appendix A: Comparison of the Proficiency Scales of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the US Interagency Language Roundtable, 
Appendix B: US and Overseas Universities with Language Flagship Programs, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Language Flagship: Creating Expectations and Opportunities for Professional-Level Language Learning in Undergraduate Education

Michael Nugent and Robert Slater

Introduction

This chapter describes the first decade of the Language Flagship, beginning with a discussion of the national need for a systematic approach to creating opportunities for advanced- to superior-level language learning in US post-secondary education. It discusses how the Language Flagship was developed within the context of language education in US higher education and follows with an analysis of the initial implementation and subsequent evolution as the Flagship began involving increasing numbers of institutions of higher education, faculty and students. The chapter covers the programmatic decisions that established clear expectations necessary for professional-level language learning outcomes at universities while at the same time creating the realistic opportunities for undergraduate students to achieve proficiency. It discusses how the Language Flagship strived to maintain a balance between a process driven by federal needs and one that represented a strategic investment in the development of capacity and expertise to address a fundamental long-term shift in philosophy and approach.

The Flagship Concept

The Language Flagship is one of the more important national innovations to language learning within the US higher education system. Flagship established for the first time a responsible and accountable partnership between the federal government and higher education with a goal to produce high-level language proficiency skills, identified as a critical shortfall by the national security community throughout the 1980s and 90s (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services, 2008). The events of 9/11 served to galvanize support for efforts to challenge higher education to enable students to graduate with certified foreign language proficiency. A 2002 review of the US Department of Defense language requirements identified the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Level 3 (Appendix A), General Professional Proficiency, as the target proficiency level necessary for professionals to perform their duties adequately. College and university graduates with such language skills were seen as an important new resource for a civilian workforce (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services, 2005). Increasingly, the need for such high-level language expertise was also felt in the private and non-profit sectors (National Security Education Program [NSEP], 2009).

Why was this expertise so difficult to find? Unlike most other countries, the US elementary and secondary school system has not historically recognized proficiency-based second language learning as a priority, particularly following an era of educational reform defined by efforts to test in other core areas (Rosenbusch, 2005). Fewer than 25% of colleges and universities require prior language study for entrance (Modern Language Association [MLA] Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007); the US higher education system in general has not focused on language proficiency development as a skill set across the undergraduate curriculum. Instead, most language departments have defined their roles in terms of the foreign language major, emphasizing literature studies over more measureable language skills (MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007). In responding to this dilemma, the Language Flagship concept rests on a clearly defined purpose of challenging a limited set of universities to create a pool of educated university graduates with demonstrated professional-level language proficiency in speaking, listening, reading and writing (NSEP, 2004).

Creating the capability to reach these proficiency goals presented significant challenges to US higher education. The liberal arts tradition of the US higher education system has contributed to a form of undergraduate study in the United States that is unique in providing a wide array of course requirements and electives that, in some ways, resembles the broader curriculum and requirements in advanced secondary schools in other countries (Geiger, 1986, 2015). As Clark (1985) has pointed out, such a broad focus of requirements within the US undergraduate curriculum has in some ways relieved US high schools from providing a similar preparation for US students in high school, creating a situation where basic language acquisition is a part of the US higher education curriculum along with students' major concentrations and other elective courses. Unfortunately, despite the ubiquitous rhetoric about globalization by many university leaders over the last two decades, fewer universities require language study for graduation, and the overall enrollments in foreign language remain low relative to those in many other industrialized countries (Skorton & Altschuler, 2012).

Producing such capabilities in US college graduates in meaningful numbers and making language learning available to a broader cross section of students (i.e. to those whose area of specialization is not in language) meant that a critical mass of higher education institutions would have to agree to change the way that Americans learn languages within an already crowded post-secondary curriculum. Essentially, programs had to agree on setting new and much higher expectations for students who were selected into these special-focus language programs and then to create the opportunities to meet these expectations. The expectations were quite straightforward: to enable students to graduate with the same kinds of language capabilities that educated non-native English-speaking professionals from other industrialized countries use in their daily professional lives when using English or another language foreign to them. Given the historical lack of attention to articulated and sustained language learning at the K-12 (i.e. primary and secondary) level, higher education would have to take this challenge on from beginning to end.

Despite these academic challenges, the NSEP, established by the US Congress in 1991 (The David L. Boren National Security Education Act of 1991) created the Language Flagship, designed to address the long-standing national need for language skills as well as the long-standing frustration of federal agencies with the inability of US academic language programs to produce graduates with higher-level language proficiencies. When established, NSEP joined a set of existing federal programs whose goals focused on the need for area studies and language expertise. The rationale for the program, outlined in Section 801 of the Act, included an 'interest in taking actions to alleviate the problem of American undergraduate and graduate students being inadequately prepared to meet the challenges posed by increasing global interaction among nations' (The David L. Boren National Security Education Act of 1991: 1).

In fact, the documented US government need for language skills, along with strong Department of Defense support for their development, has been evident since the establishment of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which underscored the need for Americans to have language skills as well as science and technical skills (Lambert, 2010). This landmark legislation resulted in US congressional support for international studies and language learning at US academic institutions through programs that later came to be called 'Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Programs' (Brecht & Rivers, 2000). Over the years, such support helped to create excellent regional area studies centers (Title VI National Resource Centers) at over 100 key academic institutions to support advanced research and study abroad programs. Collectively, these programs have served to create many international and area studies experts in the academic, non-profit and public sphere, and have supported the teaching of a large array of less commonly taught languages (Wiley & Glew, 2010).

Despite this federal support, certified language acquisition to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Advanced and Superior levels of proficiency has not been a priority of the Title VI National Resource Centers, especially at the undergraduate level (Lambert, 2010). The 2007 National Research Council's Report on Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs underscored a lack of focus on the part of the US Department of Education on foreign language education, stating that, '[the Department of Education] has not made foreign language and culture a priority and its several programs appear to be fragmented. There is no apparent master plan or unifying strategic vision' (National Research Council, 2007: 4). Moreover, much of the support over the years for language learning through the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs had not supported proficiency-based language instruction, meaning that there was no tie between federal funding and any specific proficiency goals, outcomes or measurements (National Research Council, 2007).

The Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs had the additional challenge of attempting to support language study within an existing two-tiered faculty structure in language departments, as characterized by the 2007 MLA Report. The report criticized US language departments for perpetuating a system where 'language instructors often work entirely outside departmental power structures and have little or no say in the educational mission of their department, even in areas where they have particular expertise' (MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007: 2). This division is even more pronounced, according to the MLA Report, at doctorate-granting institutions, which receive the bulk of the US Department of Education Title VI support. As a result of these structural factors, faculty members involved in language instruction have struggled for a voice in determining their role as academic professionals. As the MLA Report states,

Such a configuration defines both the curriculum and the governance structure of language departments and creates a division between the language curriculum and the literature curriculum and between tenure-track literature professors and language instructors in non tenure-track positions. At doctorate-granting institutions, cooperation or even exchange between the two groups is usually minimal or nonexistent. (MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007: 2–3)

This observation from the MLA Report is critical in understanding the challenges over the years of establishing effective language programs in the US post-secondary education system. Ultimately, any program that sets high expectations for language proficiency must be able to create opportunities for students to meet those expectations. Departmentsmust reward faculty for building and executing these programs, even if it takes them away from the demands of a tenure-driven system requiring research publications. Without professional autonomy and power, the majority of language faculty, tenured or not, have traditionally lacked the organizational power to change the system: the weight of power often rests with faculty who do not have language instruction as a primary area of focus or as their means of being rewarded at the institutional as well as the professional level. As discussed in the MLA Report: 'This two-track model endows one set of language professionals not only with autonomy in designing their curricula but also with the power to set the goals that the other set of professionals must pursue' (MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, 2007: 4).

In addition to this challenge, it is important to point out that the bulk of Title VI-Fulbright Hays funding to Title VI National Resource Centers supported programming and research in area studies. Such support did little to challenge the two-tiered system criticized by the MLA Report and may have even created another level of unequal differentiation between those involved in area studies and those involved in language instruction at Title VI-supported institutions. As a result, little clear advocacy or consistent support for ACTFL Advanced- to Superior-level language learning (ILR 2-3) existed within the higher educational system before the creation of the Language Flagship. Some federal programs, such as the Title VI Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language program, the NSEP grants to institutions of higher education and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), attempted over the years to provide support to spur innovation in language teaching approaches and practice (Nugent, 2011). In addition, funding awarded through the Title VI Language Resource Centers and the International Research and Studies programs supported a range of efforts to sustain and improve language learning on US colleges and university campuses (National Research Council, 2007). Some programs, such as the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program, did support more advanced language training overseas and, in the case of Russian, carefully measured language proficiency (Davidson, 2010), even though language proficiency was not a required goal of the federal program. The most rigorous efforts to produce language gains in languages such as Russian, which is classified by the federal government as being more difficult than many other languages for speakers of English (Jackson & Kaplan, 2001), were able to achieve the level of ILR 1+, with some of them reaching ILR Level 2 by the end of their study (Davidson, 2010; Watson et al., 2013). Lastly, the FIPSE International Cooperative programs were established in the mid-1990s to create opportunities for academic and professional programs to integrate language study with academic and professional disciplines in an overseas learning environment (Nugent, 2011). However, missing in many of these programs were specific standards to outline what the students should be able to achieve in their language skills upon completing their undergraduate study and strategies to enable them to attain these standards. One notable exception was the FIPSE-supported University of Rhode Island International Engineering program (IEP) that successfully integrated language learning and engineering studies as a general program practice, rather than as an exception for individual students (Grandin, 2011).

Flagship: Early Years

Within this national context and following extensive consultations with national security agencies within the federal government, NSEP announced in 2000 that it would transition and repurpose its Institutional Grants program toward a pilot National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI) (NSEP, 2003). Based on its statutory mission and its experience working with colleges and universities, NSEP proposed to raise standards by creating a program that would advocate movement toward 'advanced language capacity in the U.S.' (NSEP, 2000). The goal was to refocus existing NSEP funding (only about $2 million per year) toward specific efforts to 'produce higher proficiency levels in critical languages in the United States' (NSEP, 2003). In September 2002, Congress officially authorized NSEP to implement the NFLI, and NSEP made its first awards for Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Russian (NSEP, 2004).

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Multilingual Matters Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1783096098
• ISBN 13: 9781783096091
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 259
• Redattore: Murphy Dianna, Evans-Romaine Karen
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile