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An Open Letter to Deans
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53 thoughts on “An Open Letter to Deans”
If everyone who reads here simply did as Eric and actually forwarded this article to administrators, it might impact, ultimately, some of the victims here, the hapless and hopeless university students who are being targeted in a form, as Asher called it, of criminal negligence.
Really? University students are working part time jobs and going into sometimes unrecoverable debt for language instruction offered by unqualified instructors? I would like to formally request that everyone in our group do this, even if you would rather not, because it’s too much hassle. It’s not too much hassle and it’s worth doing.
We must take the fight to the oblivious but no less culpable enablers of these people, who have been allowed to get away with bad language instruction for far too long, hiding conveniently behind their degrees earned in areas other than language instruction.
How much trouble would it be to write the dean of your local universities on this one? You could cut and paste the letter with some kind of short introduction such as:
Dear Dean _________:
This recent article by Dr. Bill VanPatten, Director of Spanish and French Language Instruction at Michigan State University, deserves your attention. It describes a problem in your university that has been going on, unnoticed, for a long time now.
Thanks,
[Your name]
Now you don’t even have to compose the introduction, or you could use the one Eric wrote at the beginning of the post, either one. Do it. Hasn’t this ugly secret been hiding in the language departments of so many highly respected universities for too long? Isn’t it time that someone do something to protect those tens of thousands of university students who leave college each year thinking that they suck at languages?
As well as forwarding to University faculty, I recommend forwarding to your administrators at your HS or Elementary school. I would substitute the below paragraph for what I originally wrote as the 2nd paragraph (after the link).
“The survey found only 6% of a university language department are experts in language acquisition and there are 0% language experts at Ivy League schools. Language expert was defined here as someone with a PhD and conducting research. By that definition we have almost no language experts beyond universities. If we defined a language expert as someone with a degree in theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, or language acquisition, or someone with comparable knowledge then we’d probably find the same (probably lower) percentages of “language experts” in high school, middle school, and elementary school language departments.”
I would just like to say that both Ben and Eric rock, as well as Sabrina, for bringing this Open Letter to our attention. I have been working backwards by reading and rereading much of Bill Van Patten’s and James Lee’s work (Lee was the lead author of “Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen,” which is an extremely important book, whatever minor flaws that may reside in it). I know that I am slow, but it is just dawning on me now that basically BVP has very quietly put together a mammoth career in Second Language Acquisition. To borrow a somewhat trite basketball metaphor, he’s down two of his best teammates, sometimes missing 60% of his shots, but is still only a few points short of a commanding 2-0 lead against the team with home court advantage and a date with destiny. When his game is on, he makes it seem effortless to say some of the most controversial and yet cogently beautiful things. This particular article is probably borne out of 25 years or more of his own hard work and the frustration of having his own graduate students undervalued for their hard work when they go on the job market, and I do hope it has the intended effect. Such a positive effect can occur if all of us send this to not only the deans who oversee university language departments that we are most closely aligned to but also to the deans who are in charge of colleges of education, and ultimately, to principals of K-12 programs who care about language learning. Those are the three biggest stakeholder groups most of us have connections to, but if you also have a dialogue with your state boards of eduction, that might also be another good recipient of this letter.
I just sent this to:
1) University of Massachusetts Amherst (Dean of College of HFA, and CC’d related Department Chairs)
2) Lyme-Old Lyme High School, CT (Super, and CC’d Asst. Super, HS Principal, and HS Asst. Principal)
Yeah! UMass is my alma mater and I grew up in Amherst. I hope they read this!
Oh yeah John we can add your name to the pack of dogs up there in that area. Not to mention the Maine dogs! Well, here’s hoping you and everyone in our group, really, chooses to contact that smooth talking dude up there. He needs a good talking to. Or a good barking at. Who will lead the pack? I nominate the Jackal.
it IS criminal.
An SFU faculty person, curriculum advisor, etc, told me “I would never ask students of French to read comic books written for French leqrners, because they must learn the literacy skills in volved in decoding text, and we want them reading authentic French as soon as possible.” This is so many kinds of wring it hurts.
BTW I think Ben has this in primers, but…the VanPatten talk in Michigan is here and WELL worth a read, as is his From Input to Output book
http://learninglanguages.celta.msu.edu/sla-vanpatten/
That book is coming in interlibrary loan. This is like the 4th time someone has recommended it.
I’m so excited to share this! I finally read it in its entirety. I am a teacher without a classroom / school at the moment, so who can I share it with? I am open to specific suggestions. I’m not connected to an institution, so …???
I can reach out to my alma mater. Actually there are a few others in this group that share the same institution…Skip? Grant? Angie? I think y’all are Midd kids? Anyone else wanna send a group-endorsed link? I’m happy to coordinate this. Let me know.
Yeah! I haven’t graduated yet, but I think it’s a GREAT idea!
I have to send to USM – they just CUT their WL program!!! They cut French and Spanish – the last hangers-on. 🙁
There is now NO where in southern Maine to study a foreign language at the university level — UNH is the only option….with OUT of state prices!!!
And…why did this happen? because the Spanish department has had a female profesora running that dept for YEARS and YEARS….she is nit-picky, a total grammarian, and stickler for minute details!!! Native speakers have taken her courses and were totally disgusted at her lack of knowledge and pronunciation of the language. My colleague is just finishing up a BA in Spanish and if not so close to the end, would’ve given up because of her! I do know of a terrific French/Spanish teacher who gave up because she didn’t want to take any more classes with her. I also stopped taking classes because of her. So SAD.
I have read most of the Van Patten White Paper (what’s a White Paper?) asking Where are the Experts and I am officially a fan of Van Patten. Ben, I know he’s a researcher and has a fancy college – ey career, but I LOVE how pissed off he is and how he’s putting it right out there – courageous and bold and taking a stand. One thing I found really interesting is that he talks about how ACTFL tried to initiate change with the new standards and that they just didn’t take hold. An interesting angle from which to look at and think about ACTFL. I think BVP might be connected with ACTFL somehow these days, like consulting for them or something.
Angie, a White Paper “is an authoritative report or guide informing in a concise manner about a complex issue and presenting the issuing body’s philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.” Originally used by the British government (e.g. the White Paper of 1939 delineating Britain’s opposition to partitioning Palestine in favor of establishing a single state governed by Arabs and Jews together), the name derives from the color of the paper used for the cover (cf. “blue book” and “green paper”).
Thanks Robert!
BVP is the chair (if that’s the term) of ACTFL’s research Special Interest Group. He moderated a panel at last year’s ACTFL conference. (I made sure to go and it was fun. One presenter was also from MI State; she presented on a survey of language professors and summarized how very unaware they were of SLA. Some of them even replied to her survey, “I teach Spanish literature. SLA doesn’t relate to my field.”)
Wow Diane. That is strong! They teach Spanish literature and that has nothing to do with teaching Spanish. Hmmm. I guess all the classes are taught in English.
Here’s a reply…
Dear Lance Piantaggini,
It’s always good to hear from a UMass alum. Thank you for sharing the VanPatten article. May I offer a few thoughts? As someone who was trained in (French) literary and cultural studies and taught both language and literature for over 30 years, I think that the polarization described in the article is overstated. The insights of second language acquisition specialists inform contemporary pedagogy in all areas, and it’s a mistake to see an absolute divide between the teaching of language and literature. As the legendary Heidi Byrnes of Georgetown says, “Culture from the beginning, language to the end.” As someone trained in our Classics Department, with its exceptional tradition of pedagogy and teacher training, I’m sure that you know this well. While I fully agree with VanPatten that L2 is a serious academic field, I don’t agree that everyone who teaches a language course needs to have a doctorate in it. To look at it from another angle, I’ve known L2 specialists, well-published and tenured, who had never lived abroad and weren’t particularly well read in literature or history. The point being that no individual can encompass the language world; we all need each other.
Putting the dean hat back on, I’m happy to say that the concern for teacher training and pedagogy remains strong at your alma mater, both in Classics and in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, where there are a number of L2 specialists in the various language programs. Did you know that UMass offers a doctorate in Hispanic Linguistics, as well as in literary and cultural studies? Since you also wrote to the Head of the Linguistics Department, I’ll mention that collaboration between the language acquisition (L1) people in Linguistics and the L2 people in other departments is thriving.
Thank you for the chance to think about issues that, in my current existence, often get lost in the paper-pushing of administrative life. I’d love to hear more about your experiences as a Latin teacher.
I think this illustrates the closed system of academia I see more and more of as I get older and wiser. Aren’t we talking about the effect on KIDS!?
The anecdote about L2 specialists not well-read is focused on what is achieved in academia. Perhaps that L2 specialist isn’t well read because they’ve spent their time getting students to the point where they CAN become well-read.
“To look at it from another angle, I’ve known L2 specialists, well-published and tenured, who had never lived abroad and weren’t particularly well read in literature or history.”
Van Patten makes this very point. Instead of having a urologist fix up my bad knee, I would rather it be an orthopedic surgeon, otherwise my legs might end up with some weird plumbing issue. If I want to know about literature and literary criticism, I’d probably be sure not to consult an SLA specialist… Likewise, I’m very certain that few medievalists can tell me much about things like the notion of trace theory and contractions and why that makes a difference in how we teach language.
Lance we all appreciate your efforts here. And you got a response. My response to the response is that this politico is smoothing out your concerns to keep them unnoticed. It is a dangerous and very common response, where the guy (usually a white male who resembles Paul Sandrock) smiles and gives the handshake and lauds how wonderful things are in their world and you are so right to say those things but really there is nothing to see here and you can move on now but do have a nice day.
It is precisely this “Aren’t we wonderful here?” glossing over of your real concerns – he did not hear them nor does he understand them nor does he care – that Helena Curtain does so well, and has done last week (https://benslavic.com/blog/37738/) to the blockbuster set of concerns laid before her by our Alisa and Eric. OK – yeah, HC is Person B – big deal, so much for trying to avoid naming names to keep the discussion around ideas and not personalities.
The UMass response you received, if any of the rest of us receive responses and we probably will, is probably going to be almost identical in tone and content to those we receive. It is because the people at the university level need to keep the illusion going, the one alluded to by Mary Beth at USM and probably a thousand other places.
But the result at USM is the final arbiter. The placed closed shop. It wasn’t making any money. The reason it wasn’t making any money was because its products sucked.
My advice? Keep sending letters, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-deans/
I lean toward inaction in the overall political fight, but this thread involving university people must be addressed more fully by someone. Their lack of even a half-way decent product provokes me. Please, if you haven’t already, read the above article and act. And Lance I would say to respond to the whitewashing of your first letter to UMass with some intense fire. I think you have Nathaniel up there and Eric is in Martha’s Vineyard. There is a time to let it go. This is not one of them. In fact one thing that we could do and I invite the group’s response on this idea, is to pick UMass for a massive email campaign in support of Lance’s original letter. Hundreds of emails copied to a number of other university language departments including VP’s at MSU might be a cool thing to do. Maybe jen could coordinate. I don’t mind either. How about it? Is anyone up for another little spat like the one we had in November with ACTFL? Sending letters to our local universities won’t work – too diffuse. But sending hundreds of emails to one person, then copying them to hundreds of other universities, without ever using the lightening rod term of TPRS, might elicit some response. Just one ant bite can’t wake up a sleeping giant, but hundreds might.
Whaaaat? This guy doesn’t make any sense at all! Van Patten doesn’t say anything about not needing culture or literature in a language class. He doesn’t say anything about having to have a PhD in order to be literate in acquisition theory. And who is this “legendary” Heidi whatserface and what does her quote even mean? That you study culture AND language together, right? What END does the quote refer to? He’s says thanks for the chance to think about the issue, but he did not think about the issue! He just bumped some meaningless words around! Is this what university scholars are like? ¡Hijole!
Yes Angie unfortunately that’s how they are. YOU have nicely articulated the content of the challenge letter I suggested above. It’s that simple. His points are beyond specious. They really are. OK – I just wanted to say specious, but it’s still true. Now you have given us a template and we can all write what we want to this guy but Lance, of course we would need your permission to do this, as you shared the dude’s response letter here. Say yes. Give us the address. Nothing will happen unless we get a bitchy edge going from time to time. SOMEONE must depants the emperor-fool at UMass. He’s getting away with a form of intellectual murder and no that is not too strong a thing to say judging from my own experience in two universities.
(Upon reflection, we really do function as a guerilla unit here. We can’t mount an outright war, no time, no funds, no army, but we can mount skirmishes here and there. I definitely think that we need to mount a skirmish here. Definitely.)
I haven’t sent the letter yet, but I was invited a few months ago a to give a talk at Boston College to graduate students in Classics who were interested in teaching Latin. I talked for about 10 minutes and then turned it into an impromptu CI workshop. There were three faculty members in attendance, including the chair and the mother of one of my students, as well as like 15 students. The response was extremely positive. The chair, who was probably my most conservative Latin teacher, invited me back to give similar workshop for the faculty next year!
We will never convince Dr. Empty Suit PHD to consider CI. These guys don’t know, don’t want to know, and don’t care. However, we can sound out these letters and hope that it will reach those who are already open to such ideas.
Professor Specious did make the same point as HC –
“I think that the polarization described in the article is overstated. The insights of second language acquisition specialists inform contemporary pedagogy in all areas, and it’s a mistake to see an absolute divide between the teaching of language and literature.”
It sounds like he, too, is afraid of divisiveness in the profession, so he simply dismisses the query, saying it’s not true. POOF!
What is at the root of it? Why do we all have to nod our heads in unison? What are they afraid of?
When I think back on my own undergrad experience, it, too, was completely devoid of CI strategies – or any pedagogy around developing fluency or proficiency. (TO be fair, I spent lots of time in Spanish-speaking countries in college…) Which begs the question, what do we want out of these college level programs? Are they for Intermediate Level and up only? What IS intermediate level, really? I think it’s mistaken for BICS – Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills – face to face discourse. So a kid comes in knowing how to handle a ‘Hello, how are you, I’m 18 and I come from Michigan,’ and can conjugate boot verbs on a placement exam…presto – they’re labeled Intermediate Level – and consider double majoring!
There is a huge desert between where a kid finishes in HS, and what’s expected in a college-level lit class. They are linked by a Conversation and Composition class – with a grammar text (at least that’s how it was for me back in the day). Woefully inadequate!
The reading and comprehension of major heavy hitter works of literature was a forgone conclusion – it’s up to the student to nail all of that content and join us for a 2-3 hour seminar about it. I’m sure there’s lots of electronic translating, summarizing and downloadable literary criticism these days to help cope with the difficulty.
I did want to share, but I don’t know if it’s the right time to skirmish. No one’s job is at stake or anything. I just walked away from my very first living-wage-paying job (in my early thirties, so you know that means I’m financially f’d) because I chose principles over principals (a Stolz quote)…I don’t have to start pissing EVERYone off all at once.
The truth is, I have a great relationship with a couple other Department Chairs, who are also CC’d on that email, and I’ve decided to continue the conversation. Let’s see if I can get the Dean thinking more big picture, and less like a scholar in a bubble. I’ll send along any replies. After that, we can storm that email castle if there’s anything troublesome.
Here’s my response below, using her terms of L2 specialist in what I would call SLA, etc.
———–
Thanks for the reply and interest in continuing a dialogue. I, too, thought that perhaps the paper-pushing would result in an encounter with the Spam folder, or recycle bin. It’s great to hear UMass has collaboration locked in…it’s just something I never got to experience on the other side of things. I anticipate a mid-life career change in linguistics, but that’s not for a while. As always, I’ll keep the alma mater in mind. Dean Hayes, I enjoyed reading your perspective. None of that letter contained any of my original ideas, so I can respond with a few now, largely in an effort to work through my own thoughts just as you did.
As you mentioned, it would be impossible to dispute the symbiotic nature of various fields within the language world. That said, there might be a hierarchy of need that’s been overlooked, at least in VanPatten’s point of view. I’ve long wondered about the number of students entering college literature courses right out of high school (I’ve come across no resource with national enrollment figures by course level). My suspicion is that the number is low, or most definitely lower than those taking elementary language courses. This suggests that more students begin a language, or retake elementary language courses in college than do literature/history. It would, then, seem that L2 specialists are in more demand than others, which doesn’t seem to be the case nationally according to VanPatten.
I am with you in that not all language teachers need a doctorate in L2, but faculty teaching college elementary language courses, and the professors who train language teachers probably should. I am now speaking of my own experience in secondary education, which, at times, seems to be separated from academia by a large chasm almost Charybdis-like. You mention the “un” well-read L2 specialists. Such a focus is not particularly necessary for high school since MOST of our students are expected to reach ACTFL’s Novice High after four years (~450 hours). Students at this proficiency level cannot read literature with ease (a point very, very close to home when it comes to Latin and the traditional canon). Therefore, I agree with you that no individual can encompass the whole world, but wish to clarify that it shouldn’t be expected. Regardless of the language, an expertise in its literature is of less use when it comes to teaching beginning language students. An extension of this logic would be to say the same holds true for language teachers of those college elementary courses.
I wonder if more students would be taking higher level literature courses after acquiring language more effectively. More so, I wonder if enrollment, in general, would be higher if more students would stick with languages other than to fulfill the 2 year requirement. A large factor is how most language programs are designed for students of high aptitude. Retention rates clearly show that most students drop out of language learning before even reaching the point of being able to read literature. My experience as a Latin teacher confirms what I see in most programs…only the best succeed and continue. These students learn languages regardless of the method, but most are left behind in the dust. I think the problem is that L2 could inform more teachers of how/what to teach, resulting in more students enrolling in language courses. I understand that primary and secondary schools feed the problem, but a trickle-down from the college level (especially when it comes to training teachers) probably couldn’t hurt.
I will jump at the chance to talk shop almost all hours of the day if anyone wants to continue this or similar conversations, especially over arabica at Amherst Coffee. I’m moving back to Northampton shortly (getting married this summer), so I’ll be around. All best,
Lance Piantaggini
Nice work, Lance! You made numerous good points!
Once again we come back to goals. What is the goal of a college language department? What do they want students to be able to do and know? . . . and once that is decided, then, who is best suited to teach that?
Our goal: to develop proficiency in the language, to learn about the nature of language (linguistics), to learn about how language is acquired (SLA), and be able to develop language proficiency in others (teaching). Language science experts are the ones for this job, not experts in literary or cultural studies.
VP defines a language science expert as someone with a PhD in language science and conducting research. Certainly, a university “language” department should consist of some of these experts and if the goal is as stated above, then these should be the majority of the faculty, especially that faculty responsible for training new teachers. But VP reports that in Ivy League schools there are 0% experts. In his survey of 27 research universities 13 schools had no experts in the Spanish language department and 21 schools had no experts in the French language department. If you adopted a less demanding definition of a language science expert, you’d surely see the same trends: the expertise of the majority of faculty in language departments is in literary/cultural studies.
And we have evidence of the consequences all around us – the (lack of) knowledge of the teachers, the low proficiency ratings and retention of students, and the outdated textbook content. VP also discusses the widespread myths about the nature of language, language acquisition, teaching, proficiency, and communication. Now does a Dean think they’re going to fix this mess by hiring more teachers of literary and cultural studies?! Does a Dean think that this problem is solved by more literary/cultural studies classes?! Does a Dean deny the lead role played by universities in creating this mess?!
Eric in my last year at Abraham Lincoln HS in Denver I had a grad student in FL education from Metro State University. His advisor, so typical of university people who just don’t get CI, was unable to “go there” after observing her practicum student start and do well with a class which I finished in what had to be the best class we had that year, with fun all over the place, one of those classes. But in processing the class with the methods teacher I realized that she didn’t understand me. I mean, it was so bad. And this person was in charge of this grad student’s professional future. She told me just after the class that she didn’t believe in “that TPRS stuff” even though my Latino French 2 kids and I had just done some of the greatest work we had ever done together in that class right in front of her, as she cowered in a corner unable to take part in our unexpected laugh-fest. When I think of that kind of situation I am moved to ask again what this group wants to do in terms of nonviolent direct action.
It’s these kinds of stories that really get the blood boiling… I’ll have more time to take action next week.
Well-said, Lance! I was happy to see so many nuanced comments, yours among them. I’m sorry to hear about your job, though. Best of luck to you in the future.
Being principled often comes with an immediate price, but the rewards can be great, in the long run. It will be good to read about your certain, future progress…
–Leigh Anne Munoz,
Claremont, Ca
Here’s a brief update from the Classics Department Chair, one of few CC’d on that email. Teresa, whom he mentions, is the Latin MAT Graduate Director:
——
Dear Lance,
I’m delighted to hear you’re coming back to the area. Let’s be in touch to get caught up. And congratulations on your wedding plans! And thanks for generating such an interesting conversation. I’m copying Teresa in — I’m sure she’ll be interested in what you and Julie have to say. We’re always looking to improve how we teach languages and how we teach language teachers
——-
This professor easily could’ve remained out of the conversation. The fact that he’s bringing in the person overseeing teacher training is huge, even if just the gesture, and illustrates why I resisted “going HAM” (channeling my students) with flooding the Dean’s inbox. We started talking.
Could this sort of action be enough? I understand people are mad, and have been dealing with this far more years than I have. Still, this seems like a healthy way to open the lines of communication. It sounds like our goal could be more about getting THEM to talk to each other. Are they going to listen to us if they disagree with VanPatten? Maybe, actually.
The VanPatten letter is huge for us. Still, we probably shouldn’t attack someone who doesn’t have a clue just because they don’t have a clue. We need to give them a chance. If they miss the entire point of VanPatten’s article, we can talk to them about what we see on a daily basis with the hoi poloi. Healthy discussion was completely lacking these past two years of the start (hopefully not end) of my career. I’d like to do everything I can to change that for the better, and I have a feeling that non-violent yet aggressive action might not be fruitful. If things get ugly, that’s always an option, but the response above seems promising.
It’s all about making one connection, right?
This is great! Thank you so much for sharing.
This is great stuff. I really like your follow-up letter, Lance. I’m curious about your statement, “I anticipate a mid-life career change in linguistics” — if you want to say any more about that. Are you thinking of being one of those in the universities who DOES get it?
I think I am predisposed for burn-out, personality wise.
When the time comes to leave the classroom, I’d like to stay in the field. Since I enjoy presenting ideas to my department, I can see that leading to one option. There is value in teaching teachers, and VanPatten’s article supports that. I might even be a more effective teacher of teachers than a teacher of Latin, who knows.
In order to teach teachers, I need a more advanced degree. I have almost no interest in getting an MA in Latin, though the University of Kentucky Institute for Latin Studies is appealing (https://mcl.as.uky.edu/latin-institute) with its immersion courses and supurb faculty. A degree in SLA would be a fine addition to my credentials if a university career is an option.
Lance, I’ve had similar thoughts. It was Krashen who told me I’d be disappointed. If I recall correctly, he didn’t know of any University departments open to our perspective and that a faculty member spends most of the time researching, not teaching.
Ah ha. If there was a way to combine SLA, language teacher training (pre-field and in-field), and one’s own language instruction into some kind of a career… What I mean by SLA is mostly visiting great CI classrooms and understanding & describing what is happening there. A bringing together of the theoretical and the practical. Then turning that into teacher training programs at university level and for in-field people. What about that? Too optimistic to think that’s possible?
What about education departments? Surely there is a way to curb this cycle of turning out new teachers with old methods. It’s like there’s a flood of newly-trained people without CI ability, and a trickle (maybe a stream?) of in-field teachers who found CI one way or another after we got frustrated with typical language teaching, one way or another. If some of us got to the level where we trained that flood of new people… ?
Ok – just thought of someone doing that. Bob Patrick.
Yeah Bob teaches grad students in language acquisition at the University of Georgia and has been well met there. But he isn’t quitting his day job. His influence is through just being a high school teacher and networking. Being in a classroom gives us the best and worst of both worlds. My conclusion is to find a school with a civil culture and civil people in it. I know I know – that’s a tall order when many American schools seem to find somewhat imbalanced leaders who think that they know more than we who are the professionals in the field and who have dedicated our lives to this work. But if such a place can be found, that, not the sheltered life of the university professor who hides, hides and yes I said hides in his tower each day. Or you can MAKE your building into that which you want, like I have to imagine Robert Harrell has done, just through expertise and effort. I do like the idea Chris had recently of a Job Postings/School Ratings (unclear) category here, where we can maybe use this site to find each other good gigs in good schools. And another idea is to become what Diana Noonan has become – a leader via passion and hard work for best practices who affects thousands of children every day and helps teacher take back their lives from dark buildings. Diane’s example is as good as I have seen in this profession, in terms of how to make a meaningful contribution that is not selfish. Krashen would know if his work is being discussed in the proper way in universities. I have heard him say the same thing. Lance we just don’t want to lose you, sucked up into a linguistics vortex at the university level. (Sometimes I think that some people who claim to know about SLA are just linguistics professors in disguise but what do I know?) In my view linguistics is code for “let’s go live in our heads and think about language instead of living in it and sharing it with others.” I think that the mind should function in service to the heart, and not in service to itself. That’s my opinion anyway. On the other hand, if you could bring some of the real SLA thinking to a university, if you could infiltrate, that would be a great thing.
The problem with education departments is that language teachers are such a small percentage of the overall number that they usually have very little regard for differences between language teaching and everything else. I think you would be hard pressed to find many that even acknowledge it as different.
Also how many of you came into this other than initially getting a degree in K-12 education with a language endorsement? I expect this is true for may of us, but probably less so among the Spanish and maybe French teachers.
Awesome points, the “other” Eric! 😉
In MA all I did was take a test that was mostly just a test of my Spanish proficiency in the 4 skills. There were random questions about Spanish history/culture, pedagogy, and language acquisition. Studying Wikipedia a few hours the night before was enough to pass those parts. Actually, that Wikipedia study was the first time I ever heard of TPRS.
I know of at least 2 FL teachers in my area that have their Masters in Spanish, but the program consisted of just 12 weeks in Spain and was almost certainly literary/cultural studies.
I’m not education-trained and didn’t know I’d ever be a teacher. It seems like that’s an exception… no? I did take Ed101 (a fluff course on the role of a teacher) because for a while in college, I thought I’d be an elementary teacher (right, didn’t happen though, ha ha). My major was geography and then finally East Asian Studies. Most US-based Chinese teachers I know were teachers of something else first, and when their schools added Chinese, they were recruited.
Eventually I worked in China for a few years, and when I came back I looked for ways to continue my own Chinese and use it in work. First as a tutor. I became a Chinese teacher 8 years only because a private school didn’t insist on state certification, which in Illinois was incredibly expensive and difficult to gain unless not working. I did an alternative program to get Wisconsin certification a couple years ago to gain that credential (and maybe to allow us to move to Wisconsin).
Ironically, I remember my high school giving all freshmen a sort of career aptitude & interest test. My scores most closely matched those of a foreign language teacher.
Never one to go at things the easy way, I took the long way around.
My first language teaching gig was Beginning Hebrew at a seminary. Sad to report, it was Grammar-Translation all the way because that was all I knew for teaching a language that would be used primarily for Bible study. At that point I was seriously considering becoming a professor at seminary.
Later – and it’s a long and interesting story that includes 13 years at Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament (hence Chevalier de l’Ouest title) – I returned to CSU Long Beach for the credential in German. I chose German because I was already fluent, having lived in Germany for a total of three years (one of them at the University in Tuebingen) and holding the MA in German, which I had earned in preparation for a program in Near Eastern studies at UCLA. (Remember, I was going to be a professor.)
My methods professor wasn’t doing TPRS but was doing T/CI. Fortunately for me, she was still at Long Beach because the very next semester she took a position at UC Irvine, and the professor who replaced her was much more traditional. That was also my first introduction to COACH, the group that is my face-to-face PLC.
My master teacher also taught using T/CI via a variety of procedures, including Suggestopedia and elements of the Silent Way.
Several courses at Long Beach were helpful. Recently I was looking through some notes from 1998 on Second Language Acquisition. I’ll have to type them into the computer and share them sometime; they show just how behind the times the traditionalists really are. Another course that I took was helpful for classroom management. I don’t remember the name of the course, but the professor was Buck Mars, and one of the most helpful parts of the course was a segment on “Who has the problem?” It has proven very beneficial in being able to analyze a situation and decide whose problem it is, then be creative in making the student’s problem, not mine.
Because of the training I had received, I was already doing a lot with Comprehensible Input even before knowing about TPRS. Unlike Ben and a lot of others, I never had the professional crisis (perhaps because I came to teaching later in life and had received good preparation for using Comprehensible Input already) that made me consider leaving teaching. Instead, I had a more gradual entry.
The first time I heard of TPRS was at a California Language Teachers Convention, and I was not impressed. I don’t remember who the presenter was, but the one-hour session probably attempted to do too much and therefore did far to little to “sell the product”. Later, when I was working on the MA in Spanish at St Louis University’s Madrid Campus, I was required to take a course in Teaching Methods. One of the students did a presentation on TPRS and asked me to help him because he wanted to use German so that the others would be able to experience it from the student perspective. Talking to him gave me an appreciation for what TPRS is about. Fortunately, when I returned to California in the fall (Madrid was a multi-year summer program*), AATG-So Cal invited Michael Miller to come and present. At first I tried to adapt TPRS to the textbook; then I tried to adapt the textbook to TPRS; finally I simply jettisoned the textbook.
Since then I have continued to read, attend workshops, and learn more about both SLA and TPRS. The more I learn about SLA, the more it confirms the rightness of my decisions. As I sometimes tell people, TPRS gives me a solid yet flexible framework on which to hang comprehensible input. Other methods or procedures are either too rigid or insufficiently supportive to work in the classroom.
As a result of the way I came to TPRS and T/CI, I look more at a person’s attitude than where that person currently is on the spectrum of teaching methods, methodologies, and procedures. If the person is interested in improving and open to thinking through how SLA research informs our practices, I can be very patient and supportive. If the person shows that he or she is not interested in even considering that there might be something better than Grammar-Translation, ALM, or the Communicative Approach – or even something better than TPRS for that matter – then I will either abandon any attempt at dialogue and work around them or overload them with research (depending on person and situation). One of the most important elements is the ability and willingness to look critically at what I do and make changes based on research, not on my skewed perspective on personal experience.
*One of life’s little ironies is that I decided to enter this program because I was teaching German and Spanish at my school and wanted to improve my own Spanish skills. Upon returning to my school the fall after I began the program, I was asked to teach World History rather than Spanish. From the time that I began the MA in Spanish program until today, I have never again taught a Spanish class. I finished the MA for my own benefit since it had no bearing on my salary or assignment. I enjoyed the program and learned a lot, but it was definitely a culture and literature program.
Robert, have you ever taken a Goethe Institut Course in teaching German – DLL?
Charlotte, the only Goethe Institut Course I have ever taken was when I first went to live in Germany. I took an 8-week course and enjoyed it. Since then, I simply have never coordinated my activities sufficiently to take another course, although I did make the attempt a couple of times. But, no Deutsch Lehrer Lernen course.
In 2009 I attended the Internationaler Deutschlehrer-Treff in Jena. It was only a week long, though, and some of the sessions were not particularly helpful. One session consisted of a university professor reading a paper in a soft voice, apparently completely oblivious to the construction noise going on right outside the window and making it impossible for those of us in the back to even hear, let alone understand, what was being said. Talk about incomprehensible! At the break, I left the session never to return – and I’m sure there are many students in schools who wish they could do something similar with their courses.
I think the most influential conferences and workshops have been:
– Michael Miller’s workshop for AATG – So Cal because it was key in my getting my feet wet. Michael’s materials make great training wheels when just learning the method; I do not recommend following them slavishly or making them “the curriculum”, though.
– Susan Gross’s workshops for CLTA. The one I remember best was a two-day workshop in Fresno.
– Carol Gaab’s week-long conference in the Dominican Republic in 2012. I had the distinct pleasure of being in Katya Paukova’s Russian class each morning and then being able to visit various other sessions in the afternoon. One of those was Jason Fritze’s session on Reader’s Theatre.
In addition, I have learned a lot from working with Jason Fritze. Two years ago, COACH (the group I work with here in California) did a five-workshop series featuring TPRS. On the one hand, I was frustrated and a bit upset that my teammates didn’t step up to the plate as far as leadership is concerned. Jason and I wound up doing by far most of the work. On the other hand, it was an invaluable experience, because we ran several sessions like a Master Class in which I taught in German while Jason made comments on what was going on and then gave suggestions that I incorporated during the next segment of teaching. Among other things, this experience really solidified Reader’s Theatre for me.
When I started college I knew that I wanted to learn as many languages as I could and travel around the world. Towards the end of my freshman year at USM (Southern Maine), I was looking at transferring to UMass Amherst when I got pregnant (oops…). So I stayed home and majored in French and Spanish so I could be a teacher (goes well with parenthood). I never managed to study abroad, and couldn’t manage an extra year of school for education/student teaching, but luckily I got hired on a conditional certificate and cobbled together the education course requirements needed for full certification.
p.s. a couple of introductory linguistics courses I took at USM were among the best classes I took there. Their language programs were a joke. 🙁 But I’m happy to be where I am now, and so happy that my learning hasn’t stopped there.
p.p.s. neither of my fellow language teachers at my school majored in education or the languages they teach.
Welcome back to Massachusetts (or Massatuchets as some of my in-laws say:), Lance.
Are you connected with SALVI? They sound like an interesting lot.
Board Members include
Bob Patrick;
Martha Abbott (Executive Director of ACTFL);
Jacqueline Carlon PhD, UMass, Boston (who has a strong interest in the application of Second Language Acquisition Theory to the teaching of classical languages).
In their Pedagogy Rusticatio they had a week of training with Jason Fritze two years ago. This year they have three members presenting at NTRPS 2015.
Maybe the connection is not as solid as I am seeing it but, under the umbrella of promoting communicative Latin, I see ACTFL, UMass, and TPRS.
Nice communication you have going.
This a great step Lance. I actually know Teresa as well. She was one of my first Latin teachers at UMass. I know the teachers in that department fairly well. My dad has been a professor at UMass for entire life so some of these people have know me since I was a baby. I should also mention that my dad is also a radical troublemaker 🙂
If you would like another friendly voice to add into the conversation, I would be more than happy to chime in on behalf of CI. I spend a lot of time in Amherst during the summer so I would game for any of these coffee shop conversations that arise.
If someone is keeping a checklist of which schools, colleges, and universities have been forwarded the Open Letter, add the following: Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC), Pellissippi State Tech. Coll. (Knoxville, TN), Central Carolina Tech (Sumter, SC). These are places I taught grammar ineffectively back in the day! Ha ha.
Thanks Stu. I appreciate it that you are there shaking things up a bit down there in my old stomping grounds around Columbia/Sumter. When I taught at Coastal Carolina in Myrtle Beach it was bad. I got good reviews, and applied for more work there but was rejected in favor of a guy with a PhD who really was hated by all the students, but who had the PhD. How many jobs has that piece of paper saved on this planet?
You can add Kent State University to the list as well.
I decided to create a spreadsheet in Google docs to keep track of all of the schools and universities that we are contacting. You can find the document here: https://goo.gl/LLTzv2
If you would like to add someone you have contacted to the list, shoot me an email (sdjohnson123@gmail.com) with as much information as you can give me and I will organize it (contact person, position, school, email address).
If you allow us to Edit, we could skip that email you step, right?
Okay, changed the settings. Please feel free to add edit! Great idea!
Good for Ohio. If anyone does write to a university or high school or to anyone, please let us know to which one. I want to know if our little initiative of direct action is going to go anywhere. I’m o.k. if it doesn’t, because I know that for most of us it’s like throwing seaweed at the hull of a passing destroyer trying to get the attention of the crew on board. All the same, VP is emerging as a strong leader for us. I’m sure that a message of appreciation to him wouldn’t hurt anything. If his own experience in academia is anything like that of SK, then we need to show our support for this brilliant star that is helping so many of us. Some day we will say the same thing for Alisa and Eric and Diane Neubauer and Coxon and Nathaniel Hardt and some of the other young stars here, in five or ten years. We can say we knew them back in the day when they were first cutting their teeth on Foreign Language Educators and moving CI based instruction along with great new ideas and full understanding of the research (Eric in particular) to save the rest of us all a lot of time. Good things happening here, and last night’s celebration of Diana was a wonderful reminder of that. If you are ripped up tired here in June, don’t give up. And speaking of retirements, here’s a shoutout to Jeanette Borich in IL who just retired after 40 years trying to swing the CI stick around in her district. In September we will welcome her here in DPS for a week of observing teachers just for fun. Like Bracey said a few days ago here, he wants to create some Latin texts so he and his kids can read them “just for fun”. Let’s never forget that we can play the fun card in our classes using CI and they can’t. And Jeanette congratulations on your long career and hard fought fight. Why is Jeannette visiting DPS if she is retired, one might ask? Because she’s not done yet. She is going to keep teaching but not in a school setting. She is going to take her time and set up a teaching situation that makes her happy. Yes, in this work, it’s life long learning, not quit when you retire. I don’t think too many grammarians can make that kind of statement. Also I want to congratulate John Piazza on finishing his first transition year from middle to high school in Berkeley, CA where it hasn’t been an easy year for him but where he has great administrative support. As we all say here so often, if our administrators support us, it makes all the difference. Congratulations to John on fighting such a strong and good fight this year. This is celebration time. We made it. We rest now. And we put on our battle gear in a few months. It’s good. We can do it. We can do this work. May God keep giving with both hands to us. We are most fortunate. God bless all of us!