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  • Science in Foreign Language EducationA Response to MLA Reports from a Liberal Arts College Spanish Program Perspective
  • Barbara Domcekova
Keywords

curriculum, foreign language, languages across curriculum, pedagogy, program goals, Spanish language

The Modern Language Association's (MLA's) recent publication of the reports "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and "Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature" concerning foreign language education has caused many of us to reexamine the language programs at our institutions and reflect on how we measure up against the proposed goals. The challenges with today's foreign language education identified in the 2007 report "New Structures" stem mostly from the two-tiered system where "two or three years of languages sequence feeds into a set of core courses, primarily focused on canonical literature." The authors point out the professional disconnect between the "humanists," who do research, and the "language specialists," who provide technical support and language training. The proposed solution lies in "replacing the two-tiered language-literature structure with a broader and more coherent curriculum in which language, culture and literature are taught as a continuous whole, supported by alliances with other departments and expressed through interdisciplinary courses" ("New Structures"). Furthermore, "New Structures" acknowledges that this transformation has already started taking place and that "foreign language faculty have been working in creative ways to cross disciplinary boundaries, incorporate the study of all kinds of material in addition to the strictly literary, and promote wide cultural understanding through research and teaching." The 2009 "Undergraduate Major" report echoes this position and suggests that in order to fully commit to courses that cut across disciplinary and language boundaries, institutions need "to invest in the interdisciplinary capacity of their faculty members through support of team teaching and faculty development." In this essay, I discuss an initiative at my institution that through collaborative efforts and faculty development led to the creation of interdisciplinary courses that begin to address the need to broaden the foreign language curriculum.

At a small liberal arts institution like mine, where tenured and tenure-track foreign language faculty members are actively involved with the language program at all levels and routinely teach courses ranging from the beginning level sequence to advanced seminars, we all take an active role in examining and reshaping our curriculum. We are all well aware of the successes and challenges of our program and of the specific courses within and beyond the foreign language requirement. As a professor of Spanish, I will comment specifically on the Spanish program and consider the criteria of the MLA reports with regard to our practices.

The goal of "translingual" and "transcultural" competence,1 although perhaps not expressed through this exact terminology, has been on the forefront of our efforts for some time. At Birmingham Southern College (BSC), we enroll approximately 1,400 undergraduate students. [End Page 139] The Spanish faculty consists of four full-time positions: three tenured or tenure-track and one lecturer. Given that most of our students fulfill the foreign language requirement by enrolling in Spanish, the majority of our courses satisfy the general education requirement in foreign languages, which leaves us with offering no more than two or three advanced courses each semester. Therefore, in our program we simply do not have the luxury of offering a wide range of advanced literature courses in addition to culture courses at the 300 level. As a matter of fact, our Spanish major requires only two survey-of-literature courses, one in Peninsular literature and one in Latin American literature. If students have time for an elective, we also offer a 400-level special topics in literature class. We cannot provide our students with a variety of courses focused on in-depth literary study. However, is that what students really want? Or need? As stated in "New Structures," only 6.1% of foreign language majors go on to obtain a Ph.D. in graduate programs in foreign language. The question that comes to mind is "What about the other 94%?" What kinds of courses are best suited to equip them with the necessary translingual and transcultural competence for their future careers, particularly if...

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