Reviewing the President's Commission recommendations, urges language departments to: make language teaching, rather than literary scholarship, their top priority; make intensive or immersion language courses part of the regular curriculum options; develop common standards of proficiency assessment; foster interaction among themselves; support…

Reexamines the theoretical presuppositions of current pedagogical second-language approaches, and questions certain assumptions that have been generally accepted. It is shown that the lack of a theoretical base for current approaches has led to weaknesses in second-language acquisition philosophy, language curriculum structuring, and the role of…

Discusses the teaching of French language, literature, and culture in light of the experiences and observations of Gustave Lanson, a professor of French at the University of Paris who taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University in 1911. It is argued that French studies as a discipline needs to emphasize the pluralistic, multicultural…

Surveys show that literature is virtually absent from secondary level second language (SL) programs; at the same time it is often asserted that literature used to dominate these programs. The thoughts of authorities and educators in Ontario, Great Britain, the United States, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Germany over the period of 100…

DESPITE THE GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE IDEA THAT LINGUISTIC BEHAVIOR AND COMMUNICATION ARE FIRST OF ALL SPOKEN, LANGUAGES ARE NOT ALWAYS TAUGHT ON THAT BASIS, AND CONFUSION STILL EXISTS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SPEECH AND WRITING. THE GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD WAS THE BASIC SYSTEM UNTIL WORLD WAR II, WHEN IT BECAME NECESSARY TO TRAIN MANY PEOPLE TO…

The alternatives to the traditional intermediate or second-year courses in community colleges are three student-centered plans designed for colleges with low or high enrollment of second-year Spanish students. Plan A is a two-year program of Spanish instruction. It consists of Spanish 101 and 102 and eight four-week minicourses, including two…

The teaching of Spanish in American schools and colleges to native speakers of Spanish has its origin in two main factors: the need for acceptance by the teaching profession of maintenance and development of the Spanish spoken natively in the United States, and the need for cultural determination by the nation's native Spanish speakers. In light…

This paper is designed to pinpoint the problems facing the teaching of foreign languages and suggests strategies that can be used in meeting these problems. The problems facing the profession have been assessed by observing foreign language teachers in the classroom and in conversations with them. Problems include the varying rate at which…

This paper first addresses the issue of the contradictory nature of informed opinion and advice in the foreign language field today. It goes on to consider such controversial topics as the introduction of the written symbol, teaching the language versus teaching about it, teaching culture, the usefulness of FLES, and individualization. The…

The author suggests that educators must (1) realistically assess the ways in which language study can and cannot contribute significantly to the student's overall educational experience and devise new methods which consciously stress goals attainable within the available time period, (2) provide more than one kind of introductory course, and (3)…

This article relates four incidents drawn from cultural lore of different countries and demonstrates the interrelatedness of international folklore. The historio- geographical method, also known as the Finnish school, of comparative folklore is discussed in the analysis of the four cultural items. Language teachers are advised of ways in which…

A digest of the reports, lectures and discussions at a colleges association conference. The program addressed concrete, pressing concerns, such as initiating student exchange in class, intensive language courses, problems posed by literature classes, the role of foreign languages in the curriculum and the outcomes of foreign language study. (AMH)

Presents an overview of the language teaching situation in Canada's universities, and makes suggestions for its improvement. (AM)

Discusses the dichotomy between foreign language and literature instruction, arguing that the objectives of the language curriculum are at odds with those of the literature curriculum; many students are not proficient enough to cope with many of the belles lettres texts without additional linguistic support; and students deserve linguistic support…

This paper reports on foreign language instruction in the community colleges of Florida. A brief rationale for increasing the importance given to language instruction is followed by a review of the literature concerning the latest classroom and laboratory foreign language techniques such as computers, video taping and analysis, audio tape…