THE ISSUE: Transforming College and University Foreign Language Departments

A position paper of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages reiterates key points made in the committee's May 2007 report to the MLA Executive Council, available online at www.mla.org/flreport, regarding foreign language instruction at US institutions of higher education. The committee recommends that the MLA (1) maintain a bank of model programs at its web site, (2) undertake networking & coalition building among foreign language educators & 40 or more relevant agencies & organizations, (3) engage in systematic lobbying at the state level & augment language education advocacy in Washington, & (4) encourage radical transformation of foreign language departments in both curriculum & governance. It is particularly important to invite literature faculty members at large research universities to acknowledge that the prevailing two-tiered system, which relegates language instruction to non-tenure-track positions, is untenable in light of the shared educational goal of developing deep translingual & transcultural competence; cultural inquiry is joined to the advancement of language competency at all levels in a proposed integrated curriculum. References. J. Hitchcock