Letter to the Editor: The Myth of Language Teaching: A Response to Francomano (2012)

Francomano (2012) reports on the presentation she made at the special panel of the 2012 MLA Convention on graduate programs in Spanish. In her remarks, she focuses on the need for graduate students to become trained teachers dealing with culture, literature, and critical thinking; in short, to become professors of humanities. This idea is well taken, and is such an obvious point to make that it seems absurd that Francomano would have to make it to begin with. Of course, graduate students in literary studies will enter the academy as scholars and teachers of the humanities. Of course, they should be equipped to deal with the profession they have chosen. My purpose here is not to comment on what I see as a laudable goal of graduate studies. Instead, I would like to examine some of Francomano's claims regarding language teaching and applied linguistics in graduate education.

Francomano claims that "at present, graduate programs emphasize language teaching." She continues: "Most graduate curricula in Spanish include applied linguistics and teaching methodologies to train students to be proficient teachers of second language acquisition." She concludes these ideas by stating: "Additionally, graduate students are given ample opportunities to become seasoned teachers as they progress through their doctoral studies" (xviii). At first blush, these comments seem factual, and for the context in which Francomano exercises her profession (Georgetown), they may be true. For the profession more generally, however, these claims are questionable.

The assertion that graduate programs across the country emphasize language teaching runs counter to what students study and are tested on in most literary graduate programs. For example, no doctoral program in literary studies that I know of includes examinations on language acquisition and/or language teaching. No graduate student in literary studies is ever asked to demonstrate in final comprehensive exams any ability in the language classroom. In fact, in many institutions, fields such as second language acquisition and second language teaching simply do not exist at the graduate level. Some institutions actively discourage or discount such fields within graduate student work. And it is rare for a graduate student to lose a teaching assistantship except under extreme situations. That is, mediocre teaching is allowed in many programs.

Related to the claim that language teaching is emphasized is the notion that graduate programs include applied linguistics and language teaching methodologies. Leaving aside that methods are dead and that applied linguistics is not a field, let's ask the question, "How many courses does the typical doctoral student in Spanish studies take on language teaching or language acquisition?" The answer is "one, at best." Ignoring what the content of such a course normally is—a point I will return to in a minute—one course on language teaching does not a proficient or knowledgeable teacher make. Contrast this situation with what happens for the area of concentration. The typical graduate program requires that students take multiple courses in Iberian literature, Spanish American literature, film, critical theory, and so on. Why? Because graduate professors know that one course in literature does not a scholar or professor of literature make. To think about this a different way, we might ask ourselves, "What background or courses would make for a proficient or knowledgeable second language teacher?" To name but some, there are courses in linguistics (syntax, phonology, pragmatics, discourse, and so on), because teachers ought to understand the nature of language as it is currently understood by linguists (not language as it is presented in textbooks, as this is far from the reality of what exists in the minds of humans). There is also second language acquisition (how learners create mental representation, what factors affect acquisition, and dozens of other related themes and issues). Having a firm foundation in the nature of acquisition allows the teacher to ask important questions such as "What processes and/or knowledge interactions do I think instruction is affecting, if at all?" And finally, there is language teaching (the ways that classrooms constrain acquisition, how classrooms may help acquisition, the roles of teachers, again, with dozens of other themes and issues). Yet, the...