Articulation and Cooperation between High-School and College Language Programs

Abstract

Some time ago the foreign-language departments of the University of Michigan became increasingly aware of the lack of articulation between foreignlanguage teaching at the University and in the state high schools.* It was felt that there was relatively little effective cooperation between the University language departments and Michigan high schools, that we at the University were no longer in close and intimate touch with our colleagues teaching foreign languages in the high schools. We felt, in short, that we knew very little about the high schools, except in a hazy sort of way, and that the high schools knew very little about us and our work, and in an equally hazy sort of way. We had, for example, little or no information concerning such questions as the following: 1. Was there a decline or growth in the number of students taking foreign languages in the high schools, let us say in the last fifteen years? 2. What text books were being used in Michigan high schools? 3. How much material was being covered in two years of foreign-language study, and how was it covered? 4. What were the attitudes of parents, administrators, counselors, and teachers toward foreign-language study? 5. What kind of students took foreign languages in the high schools, and why? 6. What were the main objectives of foreign-language study as set forth by Michigan teachers? To these questions and to others like them we had no answer. The administration of the Literary College of Michigan, working in conjunction with the Department of Romance Languages and other language departments, decided to survey the status of Romance language study in Michigan high schools. During the second semester of the academic year 1953-54, with the help of several colleagues, I conducted a visiting program covering eighty high schools where French or Spanish is taught in order to ascertain the general status of Romance languages in the high schools of Michi-