MLA Report on Foreign-Language Education Continues to Provoke Debate

Autor/in	Wasley, Paula
Titel	MLA Report on Foreign-Language Education Continues to Provoke Debate
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, 54 (2008) 27, (1 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	Second Language Instruction; Higher Education; Reports; Uncommonly Taught Languages; College Second Language Programs; Professional Associations; Role; Educational Change + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Fremdsprachenunterricht; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Abschlussbericht; Berichten; Minderheitensprache; Rollen; Bildungsreform
Abstract	This article reports that, nearly one year after its release, the report on foreign language and higher education issued by an ad hoc committee of the Modern Language Association (MLA) is still provoking discussion about reforms in the teaching of foreign languages and the role of the association in any revamp. The debate continued at a panel held last week at George Washington University. The session focused on the urgency of transforming foreign-language departments and touched on the profession's response to the Bush administration's push for more teaching of "critical" foreign languages. The committee that produced the report, "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World," was formed as a response to the focus, after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, on a lack of trained linguists and teachers in less commonly taught languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Farsi. National-security experts have unabashedly spoken of the shortfall in qualified teachers and linguists in Arabic and other languages now crucial to military, intelligence, and diplomacy, as a crisis. Yet, according to Karin C. Ryding, a professor of Arabic and linguistics at Georgetown University who was also a member of the MLA's ad hoc committee, language departments in colleges and universities are woefully short of the resources to meet sudden and immense demands. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10