Part 1: Collegiate Foreign Language Education and the Development of Advanced Abilities

The dynamics point toward the need for integrated curricular, pedagogical, and assessment regimes so that foreign language studies departments can meet internal professional and external societal demands and interests, and, most important, enhance student learning. On the language program side, there are indications that the prevailing construct of communicative competence is unable to meet that challenge. As generally interpreted and put into practice, it is insufficiently expansive to continue to guide language instruction in collegiate FL studies programs in a way that is supportive of their intellectual goals; similarly, it appears to be inadequate for the task of devising a comprehensive 4-year curriculum. Here, interpreting various dynamics inside the profession and in society as a call for an expanded conceptual framework for language and cultural studies is emphasized.